University  of  California  •  Berkeley 


WHEN    I    WAS    A    LITTLE    GIRL 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NBW  YORK   •    BOSTON  •    CHICAGO  •   DALLAS 
ATLANTA  -   SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON  •   BOMBAY  •   CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 

TORONTO 


SOMEWHKRK  BEYOND  SEALED   DOORS 


WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE 
GIRL 


BY 
ZONA   GALE 


AUTHOR   OF 

"FRIENDSHIP   VILLAGE,"    ETC. 


WITH    ILLUSTRATIONS    BY 

AGNES    PELTON 


THE   MACMILLAN    COMPANY 
I9X3 

-4/7  rights  reserved 


Copyright,  1911,  by  The  Curtis  Publishing  Company. 


COPYRIGHT,  1913, 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 

Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  October,  1913. 


Norfooob 

J.  8.  Gushing  Co.  —  Berwick  <fc  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


THE    LITTLE    GIRL    ON    CONANT    STREET 

AND    TO    THE 

MEMORY    OF    HER    GRANDMOTHER 
HARRIET    BEERS 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.     IN  THOSE  DAYS i 

II.     IN  No  TIME 16 

III.  ONE  FOR  THE  MONEY  35 

IV.  THE  PICNIC T     53 

V.  THE  KING'S  TRUMPETER  ....       77 

VI.  MY  LADY  OF  THE  APPLE  TREE        .        .     103 

VII.  THE  PRINCESS  ROMANCIA         .        .        .118 

VIII.  Two  FOR  THE  SHOW          ....     147 

IX.    NEXT  DOOR 159 

X.  WHAT'S  PROPER         .        .        .                 .     173 

XI.     DOLLS 192 

XII.     BIT-BIT 211 

XIII.  WHY 228 

XIV.  KING 247 

XV.  KING   (continued)       .         .         .         .         .281 

XVI.     THE  WALK 307 

XVII.  THE  GREAT  BLACK  HUSH         .        .        .315 

XVIII.  THE  DECORATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE        .    329 

XIX.     EARTH-MOTHER 354 

XX.  THREE  TO  MAKE  READY  ....     375 


vu 


LIST    OF    ILLUSTRATIONS 

Somewhere  beyond  sealed  doors      .          .        Frontispiece 

FACING  PAGE 

Sat  on  a  rock  in  the  landscape  and  practised    .        _.,_    32 

Little  by  little  she  grew  silent  and  refused  to  join  in 

the  games 128 

But  the  minute  folk  left  the  room  —  ah,  then  !          .     168 

She  settled  everything  in  that  way ;  she  counted  the 
petals  of  fennel  daisies  and  blew  thistle  from 
dandelions  .......  196 

Then  out  of  the  valley  a  great  deev  arose         .         .216 
To  see  what  running  away  is  really  like    .         .         .316 


THERE  used  to  be  a  little  girl  who  does  not  come  here 
any  more.  She  is  not  dead,  for  when  certain  things 
happen,  she  stirs  slightly  where  she  is,  perhaps  deep 
within  the  air.  When  the  sun  falls  in  a  particular  way, 
when  graham  griddle  cakes  are  baking,  when  the  sky 
laughs  sudden  blue  after  a  storm,  or  the  town  clock 
points  in  its  clearest  you-will-be-late  way  at  nine  in  the 
morning,  when  the  moonlight  is  on  the  midnight  and 
nothing  moves  —  then,  somewhere  beyond  sealed  doors, 
the  little  girl  says  something,  and  it  is  plain  that  she  is 
here  all  the  time. 

You  little  child  who  never  have  died,  in  these  stories 
I  am  trying  to  tell  you  that  now  I  come  near  to  under- 
standing you.  I  see  you  still,  with  your  over-long  hair 
and  your  over-much  chattering,  your  naughtiness  and 
your  dreams.  I  know  the  qualities  that  made  you  dis- 
agreeable and  those  that  made  you  dear,  and  I  look  on 
you  somewhat  as  spirit  looks  on  spirit,  understanding 
from  within.  I  wish  that  we  could  live  it  again,  you  and 
I  —  not  all  of  it,  by  any  means,  and  not  for  a  serious 
business ;  but  now  and  then,  for  a  joy  and  for  an  idleness. 
And  this  book  is  a  way  of  trying  to  do  it  over  again, 
together. 

Will  you  care  to  come  from  the  quiet  where  you  are, 
near  to  me  and  yet  remote  ?  I  think  that  you  will  come, 
for  you  were  wont  untiringly  to  wonder  about  me.  And 
now  here  I  am,  come  true,  so  faintly  like  her  whom  you 
dreamed,  yet  so  like  you  yourself,  your  child,  fruit  of 
your  spirit,  you  little  shadowy  mother.  .  .  . 


If  only  words  were  moments 
And  I  knew  where  they  fly, 
I'd  make  a  tale  of  time  itself 
To  tell  you  by  and  bye. 

If  only  words  were  fathoms 
That  let  us  by  for  pearls, 
I'd  make  a  story  ocean-strange 
For  little  boys  and  girls. 

But  words  are  only  shadow  things. 
I  summon  all  I  may. 
Oh,  see  —  they  try  to  spell  out  Life  ! 
Let's  act  it,  like  a  play. 


When   I   was   a   Little   Girl 


IN   THOSE    DAYS 

IN  those  days  time  always  bothered  us.  It 
went  fast  or  it  went  slow,  with  no  one  interfer- 
ing. It  was  impossible  to  hurry  it  or  to  hold  it 
back. 

"Only  ten  weeks  more,"  we  invariably  said 
glibly,  when  the  Spring  term  began. 

"Just  think!  We've — got — t-e-n — weeks!" 
we  told  one  another  at  the  beginning  of  vaca- 
tion, what  time  we  came  home  with  our  books, 
chanting  it:  — 

"  No  more  Latin, 
No  more  French, 
No  more  sitting  on  a  hard  wood  bench" 

—  both  chorally  and  antiphonally  chanting  it. 

Yet,  in  spite  of  every  encouragement,  the 
Spring  term  lasted  immeasurably  and  the  Sum- 
mer vacation  melted.  It  was  the  kindred 
difference  of  experience  respectively  presented 


2  WHEN   I  WAS  A   LITTLE  GIRL 

by  a  bowl  of  hot  ginger  tea  and  an  equal  bulk 
of  ice-cream. 

In  other  ways  time  was  extraordinary.  We 
used  to  play  with  it:  "Now  is  now.  But  now 
that  other  Now  is  gone  and  a  Then  is  now. 
How  did  it  do  it  ?  How  do  all  the  Nows  begin  ? " 

"When  is  the  party?"  we  had  sometimes 
inquired. 

"To-morrow,"  we  would  be  told. 

Next  morning,  "Now  it's  to-morrow!"  we 
would  joyfully  announce,  only  to  be  informed 
that  it  was,  on  the  contrary,  to-day.  But  there 
was  no  cause  for  alarm,  for  now  the  party,  it 
seemed,  had  changed  too,  and  that  would  be 
to-day.  It  was  frightfully  confusing. 

"When  is  to-morrow?"    we  demanded. 

"When  to-day  stops  being,"  they  said. 

But  never,  never  once  did  to-day  stop  that 
much.  Gradually  we  understood  and  humoured 
the  pathetic  delusion  of  the  Grown-ups  :  To-day 
lasted  always  and  yet  the  poor  things  kept  right 
on  forever  waiting  for  to-morrow. 

As  for  me,  I  had  been  born  without  the  time 
sense.  If  I  was  told  that  we  would  go  to  drive 
in  ten  minutes,  I  always  assumed  that  I  could 
finish  dressing  my  doll,  tidy  my  play-house,  put 


IN  THOSE  DAYS  3 

her  in  it  with  all  her  family  disposed  about  her 
down  to  the  penny  black-rubber  baby  dressed 
in  yarn,  wash  my  face  and  hands,  smooth  my 
hair  (including  the  protests  that  these  were 
superfluous),  make  sure  that  the  kitten  was 
shut  in  the  woodshed  .  .  .  long  before  most  of 
which  the  family  was  following  me,  haling  me 
away,  chiding  me  for  keeping  older  folk  wait- 
ing, and  the  ten  minutes  were  gone  far  by.  Who 
would  have  thought  it  ?  Ten  minutes  seem  so 
much. 

And  if  I  went  somewhere  with  permission 
to  stay  an  hour !  Then  the  hour  stretched 
invitingly  before  me,  a  vista  lined  with  crowding 
possibilities. 

"How  long  can  you  stay?"  we  always 
promptly  asked  our  guests,  for  there  was  a  feel- 
ing that  the  quality  of  the  game  to  be  entered 
on  depended  on  the  time  at  our  disposal.  But 
when  they  asked  me,  it  never  was  conceivable 
that  anything  so  real  as  a  game  should  be 
dependent  on  anything  so  hazy  as  time. 

"Oh,  a  whole  hour!"  I  would  say  royally. 
"Let's  play  City." 

With  this  attitude  Delia  Dart,  who  lived 
across  the  street,  had  no  patience.  Delia  was 


4  WHEN   I   WAS   A   LITTLE   GIRL 

definite.  Her  evenly  braided  hair,  her  square 
finger  tips,  her  blunt  questions,  her  sense  of 
what  was  due  to  Delia  —  all  these  were  definite. 

"City!"  she  would  burst  out.  "You  can't 
play  City  unless  you've  got  all  afternoon." 

And  Margaret  Amelia  and  Betty  Rodman, 
who  were  pretty  definite  too,  would  back  Delia 
up ;  but  since  they  usually  had  permission  to 
stay  all  afternoon,  they  would  acquiesce  when 
I  urged  :  "Oh,  well,  let's  start  in  anyhow." 
Then  about  the  time  the  outside  wall  had  been 
laid  up  in  the  sand-pile  and  we  had  selected  our 
building  sites,  the  town  clock  would  strike  my 
hour,  which  would  be  brought  home  to  me  only 
by  Delia  saying  :  — 

"Don't  you  go.     Will  she  care  if  you're  late  ?" 

On  such  occasions  we  never  used  the  substan- 
tive, but  merely  "she."  It  is  worth  being  a 
child  to  have  a  sense  of  values  so  simple  and  un- 
assailable as  that. 

"I'm  going  to  do  just  this  much.  I  can  run 
all  the  way  home,"  I  would  answer;  and  I 
would  begin  on  my  house  walls.  But  when 
these  were  done,  and  the  rooms  defined  by  moist 
sand  partitions,  there  was  all  the  fascination 
of  its  garden,  with  walks  to  be  outlined  with  a 


IN  THOSE  DAYS  5 

shingle  and  sprays  of  Old  Man  and  cedar  to  be 
stuck  in  for  trees,  and  single  stems  of  Fever-few 
and  Sweet  Alyssum  or  Flowering-currant  and 
Bleeding-heart  for  the  beds,  and  Catnip  for  the 
borders,  and  a  chick  from  Old-Hen-and-Chickens 
for  a  tropical  plant.  We  would  be  just  begun 
on  the  stones  for  the  fountain  when  some  alien 
consciousness,  some  plucking  at  me,  would  re- 
call the  moment.  And  it  would  be  half  an  hour 
past  my  hour. 

"You  were  to  come  home  at  four  o'clock," 
Mother  would  say,  when  I  reached  there  panting. 

"Why  did  I  have  to  come  home  at  four 
o'clock?"  I  would  finally  give  way  to  the 
sense  of  great  and  arbitrary  wrong. 

She  always  told  me.  I  think  that  never  in 
my  life  was  I  bidden  to  do  a  thing,  or  not  to  do 
it,  "because  I  tell  you  to."  But  never  once 
did  a  time-reason  seem  sufficient.  What  were 
company,  a  nap-because-I-was-to-sit-up-late,  or 
having-to-go-somewhere-else  beside  the  reality 
of  that  house  which  I  would  never  occupy,  that 
garden  where  I  would  never  walk  ? 

"You  can  make  it  the  next  time  you  go  to 
Delia's,"  Mother  would  say.  But  I  knew  that 
this  was  impossible.  I  might  build  another 


6  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

house,  adventure  in  another  garden ;  this  one 
was  forever  lost  to  me. 

"  .  .  .  only,"  Mother  would  add,  "you  can 
not  go  to  Delia's  for  ..."  she  would  name  a 
period  that  yawned  to  me  as  black  as  the  abyss. 
"...  because  you  did  not  come  home  to-day 
when  you  were  told."  And  still  time  seemed  to 
me  indefinite.  For  now  it  appeared  that  I 
should  never  go  to  Delia's  again. 

I  thought  about  it  more  and  more.  What 
was  this  time  that  was  laid  on  us  so  heavy  ? 
Why  did  I  have  to  get  up  because  it  was  seven 
o'clock,  go  to  school  because  it  was  nine,  come 
home  from  Delia's  because  the  clock  struck 
something  else  .  .  .  above  all,  why  did  I  have 
to  go  to  bed  because  it  was  eight  o'clock  ? 

I  laid  it  before  my  little  council. 

"Why  do  we  have  to  go  to  bed  because  it's 
bed-time?"  I  asked  them.  "Which  started 
first  —  bed-time  or  us  ?" 

None  of  us  could  tell.  Margaret  Amelia 
Rodman,  however,  was  of  opinion  that  bed- 
time started  first. 

"Nearly  everything  was  here  before  we  were," 
she  said  gloomily.  "We  haven't  got  anything 
in  the  house  but  the  piano  and  the  rabbits  that 


IN  THOSE   DAYS  7 

wasn't  first  before  us.  Mother  told  father  this 
morning  that  we'd  had  our  stair-carpet  fifteen 
years." 

We  faced  that.  Fifteen  years.  Nearly  twice 
as  long  as  we  had  lived.  If  a  stair-carpet  had 
lasted  like  that,  what  was  the  use  of  thinking 
that  we  could  find  anything  to  control  on  the 
ground  of  our  having  been  here  first  ? 

Delia  Dart,  however,  was  a  free  soul.  "/ 
think  we  begun  before  bed-time  did,"  she  said 
decidedly.  "Because  when  we  were  babies, 
we  didn't  have  any  bed-time.  Look  at  babies 
now.  They  don't  have  bed-times.  They  sleep 
all  the  while." 

It  was  true.  Bed-time  must  have  started 
after  we  did.  Besides,  we  remembered  that  it 
was  movable.  Once  it  had  been  half  past  seven. 
Now  it  was  eight.  Delia  often  sat  up,  accord- 
ing to  her  own  accounts,  much  later  even  than 
this. 

"  Grown-ups  don't  have  any  bed-time  either," 
Betty  took  it  up.  "They're  like  babies." 

This  was  a  new  thought.  How  strange  that 
Grown-ups  and  babies  should  share  this  im- 
munity, and  only  we  be  bound. 

"Who  made  bed-time?"   I  inquired  irritably. 


8  WHEN   I  WAS  A   LITTLE   GIRL 

" S-h-h  ! "  said  Delia.     "God  did." 

"I  don't  believe  it,"  I  announced  flatly. 

"Well,"  said  Delia,  "anyway,  he  makes  us 
sleepy." 

This  I  also  challenged.  "Then  why  am  I 
sleepier  when  I  go  to  church  evenings  than  when 
I  play  Hide-and-go-seek  in  the  B  rice's  barn 
evenings  ?"  I  submitted. 

This  was  getting  into  theology,  and  Delia 
used  the  ancient  method. 

"We  aren't  supposed  to  know  all  those 
things,"  she  said  with  superiority,  and  the 
council  broke  up. 

That  night  I  brought  my  revolt  into  the  open. 
At  eight  o'clock  I  was  disposing  the  articles  in 
my  play-house  so  that  they  all  touched,  in  order 
that  they  might  be  able  to  talk  during  the 
night.  It  was  well-known  to  me  that  inani- 
mate objects  must  touch  if  they  would  carry 
on  conversation.  The  little  red  chair  and 
the  table,  the  blue  paper-weight  with  a  little 
trembling  figure  inside,  the  silver  vase,  the 
mug  with  "Remember  me"  in  blue  letters,  the 
china  goat,  all  must  be  safely  settled  so  that 
they  might  while  away  the  long  night  in  talk. 
The  blue-glass  paper  weight  with  the  horse  and 


IN  THOSE   DAYS  9 

rider  within,  however,  was  uncertain  what  he 
wanted  to  companion.  I  tried  him  with  the 
china  horse  and  with  the  treeful  of  birds  and 
with  the  duck  in  a  boat,  but  somehow  he  would 
not  group.  While  he  was  still  hesitating,  it 
came :  — 

"Bed-time,  dear,"  they  said. 

I  faced  them  at  last.  I  had  often  objected, 
but  I  had  never  reasoned  it  out. 

"I'm  not  sleepy,"  I  announced  serenely. 

"But  it's  bed-time,"  they  pressed  it  mildly. 

"Bed-time  is  when  you're  sleepy,"  I  explained. 
"I'm  not  sleepy.  So  it  can't  be  bed-time." 

"Bed-time  is  eight  o'clock,"  they  said  with 
a  hint  of  firmness,  and  picked  me  up  strongly 
and  carried  me  off;  and  to  my  expostulation 
that  the  horse  and  his  rider  in  the  blue  paper- 
weight would  have  nobody  to  talk  to  all  night, 
they  said  that  he  wouldn't  care  about  that; 
and  when  I  wept,  they  said  I  was  cross,  and  that 
proved  it  was  Bed-time. 

There  seemed  no  escape.  But  once  —  once 
I  came  near  to  understanding.  Once  the  door 
into  Unknown-about  Things  nearly  opened  for 
me,  and  just  for  a  moment  I  caught  a  glimpse. 

I  had  been  told  to  tidy  my  top  bureau  drawer. 


io  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

I  have  always  loathed  tidying  my  top  bureau 
drawer.  It  is  so  unlike  a  real  task.  It  is  made 
up  of  odds  and  ends  of  tasks  that  ought  to  have 
been  despatched  long  ago  and  gradually,  by 
process  of  throwing  away,  folding,  putting  in 
boxes,  hanging  up,  and  other  utterly  uninterest- 
ing operations.  I  can  create  a  thing,  I  can  de- 
stroy a  thing,  I  can  keep  a  thing  as  it  was  ;  but  to 
face  a  top  bureau  drawer  is  none  of  these  things. 
It  is  a  motley  task,  unclassified,  without  honour, 
a  very  tag-end  and  bobtail  of  a  task,  fit  for 
nobody. 

I  was  thinking  things  that  meant  this,  and 
hanging  out  the  window.  It  was  a  gentle  day, 
like  a  perfectly  natural  human  being  who  wants 
to  make  friends  and  will  not  pretend  one  iota 
in  order  to  be  your  friend.  I  remember  that 
it  was  a  still  day,  that  I  loved,  not  as  I  loved 
Uncle  Linas  and  Aunt  Frances,  who  always 
played  with  me  and  gave  me  things,  but  as  I 
loved  Mother  and  father  when  they  took  me 
somewhere  with  them,  on  Sunday  afternoons. 
...  I  had  a  row  of  daffodils  coming  up  in  the 
garden.  I  began  pretending  that  they  were 
marching  down  the  border,  down  the  border, 
down  the  border  to  the  big  rock  by  the  cook- 


IN  THOSE  DAYS  II 

ing-apple  tree  —  why  of  course  !  I  had  never 
thought  of  it,  but  that  rock  was  where  they  got 
their  gold.  .  .  . 

A  house-wren  came  out  of  a  niche  in  the  porch 
and  flew  down  to  the  platform  in  the  boxalder, 
where  father  was  accustomed  to  feed  jthe  birds. 
The  platform  was  spread  with  muffin  crumbs. 
The  little  wren  ate,  and  flew  to  the  clothes-line 
and  poured  forth  his  thankful  exquisite  song. 
I  had  always  felt  regret  that  we  had  no  clothes 
reel  that  would  whirl  like  a  witch  in  the  wind, 
but  instead  merely  a  system  of  clothes-lines, 
duly  put  up  on  Mondays ;  but  the  little  wren 
evidently  did  not  know  the  difference. 

"  Abracadabra,  make  me  sing  like  that  .  .  ." 
I  told  him.  But  I  hadn't  said  the  right  thing, 
and  he  flew  away  and  left  me  not  singing.  I 
began  thinking  what  if  he  had  made  me  sing,  and 
what  if  I  had  put  back  my  head  and  gone  down- 
stairs singing  like  a  wren,  and  gone  to  arith- 
metic class  singing  like  a  wren,  and  nobody 
could  have  stopped  me,  and  nobody  would  have 
wanted  to  stop  me.  .  .  . 

...  I  leaned  over  the  sill,  holding  both  arms 
down  and  feeling  the  blood  flow  down  and 
weight  my  fingers  like  a  pulse.  What  if  I 


12  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

should  fall  out  the  window  and  instead  of  strik- 
ing the  ground  hard,  as  folk  do  when  they  fall 
out  of  windows,  I  should  go  softly  through  the 
earth,  and  feel  it  pressing  back  from  my  head 
and  closing  together  behind  my  heels,  and  pretty 
soon  I  should  come  out,  plump  .  .  .  before  the 
Root  of  Everything  and  sit  there  for  a  long  time 
and  watch  it  grow.  .  .  . 

...  I  looked  up  at  the  blue,  glad  that  I  was 
so  near  to  it,  and  thought  how  much  pleasanter 
it  would  be  to  fly  right  away  through  the  blue 
and  see  what  colour  it  was  lined  with.  Pink, 
maybe  —  rose-pink,  which  showed  through  at 
sunset  when  the  sun  leaped  at  last  through  the 
blue  and  it  closed  behind  him.  Rose-pink,  like 
my  best  sash  and  hair-ribbons.  .  .  . 

That  brought  me  back.  My  best  sash  and 
hair-ribbons  were  in  my  top  drawer.  More- 
over, there  were  foot-steps  on  the  stairs  and  at 
the  very  door. 

"Have  you  finished  ?"  Mother  asked. 

I  had  not  even  opened  the  drawer. 

"You  have  been  up  here  one  hour,"  Mother 
said,  and  came  and  stood  beside  me.  "What 
have  you  been  doing  ?" 

I  began  to  tell  her.     I  do  not  envy  her  her 


IN  THOSE   DAYS  13 

quandary.  She  knew  that  I  was  not  to  be  too 
heavily  chided  and  yet  —  the  top  drawers  of 
this  world  must  be  tidied. 

"Think!"  she  said.  "That  Hour  has  gone 
out  the  window  without  its  work  being  done. 
And  now  this  Hour,  that  was  meant  for  play, 
has  got  to  work.  But  not  you  !  You've  lost 
your  turn.  Now  it's  Mother's  turn." 

She  made  me  sit  by  the  window  while  she 
tidied  the  drawer.  I  was  not  to  touch  it  —  I  had 
lost  my  turn.  While  she  worked,  she  talked  to  me 
about  the  things  she  knew  I  liked  to  talk  about. 
But  I  could  not  listen.  It  is  the  only  time  in 
my  life  that  I  have  ever  really  frantically  wanted 
to  tidy  a  top  bureau  drawer  of  anybody's. 

"Now,"  she  said  when  she  had  done,  "this 
last  Hour  will  meet  the  Hour-before-t he-last, 
and  each  of  them  will  look  the  way  the  other 
ought  to  have  looked,  and  they  will  be  all  mixed 
up.  And  all  day  I  think  they  will  keep  trying 
to  come  back  to  you  to  straighten  them  out. 
But  you  can't  do  it.  And  they'll  have  to  be 
each  other  forever  and  ever  and  ever." 

She  went  away  again,  and  I  was  left  face  to 
face  with  the  very  heart  of  this  whole  perplex- 
ing Time  business  :  those  two  Hours  that  would 


14  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

always  be  somewhere  trying  to  be  each  other, 
forever  and  ever,  and  always  trying  to  come 
back  for  me  to  straighten  them  out. 

Were  there  Hours  out  in  the  world  that  were 
sick  hours,  sick  because  we  had  treated  them 
badly,  and  always  trying  to  come  back  for  folk 
to  make  them  well  ? 

And  were  there  Hours  that  were  busy  and 
happy  somewhere  because  they  had  been  well 
used  and  they  didn't  have  to  try  to  come  back 
for  us  to  patch  them  up  ? 

Were  Hours  like  that  ?     Was  Time  like  that  ? 

When  I  told  Delia  of  the  incident,  she  at  once 
characteristically  settled  it. 

"Why,  if  they  wasn't  any  time,"  she  said, 
"we'd  all  just  wait  and  wait  and  wait.  They 
couldn't  have  that.  So  they  set  something 
going  to  get  us  going  to  keep  things  going." 

Sometimes,  in  later  life,  when  I  have  seen 
folk  lunch  because  it  is  one  o'clock,  worship 
because  it  is  the  seventh  day,  go  to  Europe 
because  it  is  Summer,  and  marry  because  it  is 
high  time,  I  wonder  whether  Delia  was  not  right. 
Often  and  often  I  have  been  convinced  that  what 
Mother  told  me  about  the  Hours  trying  to  come 
back  to  get  one  to  straighten  them  out  is  true 


IN  THOSE  DAYS  15 

with  truth  undying.  And  I  wish,  that  morning 
by  the  window,  and  at  those  grim,  inevitable 
Bed-times,  that  I,  as  I  am  now,  might  have  told 
that  Little  Me  this  story  about  how,  just  pos- 
sibly, they  first  noticed  time  and  about  what, 
just  possibly,  it  is. 


II 

IN    NO    TIME 

BEFORE  months,  weeks,  days,  hours,  minutes, 
and  seconds  were  counted  and  named,  consider 
how  peculiar  it  all  must  have  seemed.  For 
example,  when  the  Unknown-about  Folk  of 
those  prehistoric  times  wished  to  know  when  a 
thing  would  happen,  of  course  they  can  have 
had  no  word  when,  and  no  answer.  If  a  little 
Prehistoric  Girl  gave  a  party,  she  cannot  have 
known  when  to  tell  her  guests  to  come,  so  she 
must  have  had  to  wait  until  the  supper  was 
ready  and  then  invite  them;  and  if  they  were 
not  perfectly-bred  little  guests,  they  may  have 
been  offended  because  they  hadn't  been  invited 
before  —  only  they  would  not  have  known  how 
to  say  or  to  think  "before,"  so  they  cannot 
have  been  quite  sure  what  they  were  offended 
at;  but  they  may  have  been  offended  anyway, 
as  happens  now  with  that  same  kind  of  guest. 
And  if  a  little  Prehistoric  Boy  asked  his  father 

16 


IN   NO  TIME  17 

to  bring  him  a  new  eagle  or  a  new  leopard  for 
a  pet,  and  his  father  came  home  night  after  night 
and  didn't  bring  it,  the  Prehistoric  Boy  could 
not  say,  "When  will  you  bring  it,  sir  ?"  because 
there  was  no  when,  so  he  may  have  asked  a  great 
many  other  questions,  and  been  told  to  sit  in 
the  back  of  the  cave  until  he  could  do  better. 
Nobody  can  have  known  how  long  to  boil  eggs 
or  to  bake  bread,  and  people  must  have  had  to 
come  to  breakfast  and  just  sit  and  wait  and  wait 
until  things  were  done.  Worst  of  all,  nobody 
can  have  known  that  time  is  a  thing  to  use  and 
not  to  waste.  Since  they  could  not  measure 
it,  they  could  not  of  course  tell  how  fast  it  was 
slipping  away,  and  they  must  have  thought  that 
time  was  theirs  to  do  with  what  they  pleased, 
instead  of  turning  it  all  into  different  things  — 
this  piece  into  sleep,  this  piece  into  play,  this 
piece  into  tasks  and  exercise  and  fun.  Just 
as,  in  those  days,  they  probably  thought  that 
food  is  to  be  eaten  because  it  tastes  good  and 
not  because  it  makes  the  body  grow,  so  they 
thought  that  time  was  a  thing  to  be  thrown  away 
and  not  to  be  used,  every  bit  —  which  is,  of 
course,  a  prehistoric  way  to  think.  And  no- 
body can  have  known  about  birthdays,  and  no 


i8  WHEN   I  WAS  A   LITTLE   GIRL 

story  can  have  started  uOnce  upon  a  time," 
and  everything  must  have  been  quite  differ- 
ent. 

About  then,  —  only  of  course  they  didn't 
know  it  was  then — a  Prehistoric  Mother  said  one 
morning  to  her  Prehistoric  Little  Daughter :  - 

"Now,  Vertebrata,  get  your  practising  done 
and  then  you  may  go  to  play."  (It  wasn't  a 
piano  and  it  wasn't  an  organ,  but  it  was  a  lovely, 
reedy,  blow-on-it  thing,  like  a  pastoral  pipe, 
and  little  girls  always  sat  about  on  rocks  in  the 
landscape,  as  soon  as  they  had  had  their  break- 
fasts, and  practised.) 

So  Vertebrata  took  her  reed  pipes  and  sat 
on  a  rock  in  the  landscape  and  practised  —  all 
of  what  we  now  know  (but  she  did  not  know) 
would  be  five  minutes.  Then  she  came  in  the 
cave,  and  tossed  the  pipes  on  her  bed  of  skins, 
and  then  remembered  and  hung  them  in  their 
place  above  the  fireplace,  and  turned  toward 
the  doorway.  But  her  mother,  who  was  roast- 
ing flesh  at  the  fire,  called  her  back. 

"Vertebrata,"  she  said,  "did  I  not  tell  you  to 
practise  ?" 

"I  did  practise,"  said  Vertebrata. 

"Then  practise  and  practise,"  said  her  mother, 


IN  NO  TIME  19 

not  knowing  how  else  to  tell  her  to  do  her  whole 
hour.  Her  mother  didn't  know  hours,  but  she 
knew  by  the  feel  of  her  feelings  when  Verte- 
brata  had  done  enough. 

So  Vertebrata  sat  on  a  rock  and  did  five  min- 
utes more,  and  came  and  threw  her  pipes  on  her 
bed  of  skins,  and  remembered  and  hung  them 
up,  and  then  turned  toward  the  door  of  the 
cave.  But  her  mother  looked  up  from  the 
flesh-pot  and  called  her  back  again. 

"Vertebrata,"  she  said,  "do  you  want  mother 
to  have  to  speak  to  you  again  ?" 

"No,  indeed,  muvver,"  said  her  little  daughter. 

"Then  practise  and  practise  and  practise," 
said  her  mother.  "If  you  can't  play  when  you 
grow  up,  what  will  people  think  ?" 

So  Vertebrata  went  back  to  her  landscape 
rock,  and  this  thing  was  repeated  until  Verte- 
brata had  practised  what  we  now  know  (but 
she  did  not  -know)  to  have  been  a  whole  hour. 
And  you  can  easily  see  that  in  order  to  bring 
this  about,  what  her  mother  must  have  said  to 
her  the  last  time  of  all  was  this  : — 

"I  want  you  to  practise  and  practise  and 
practise  and  practise  and  practise  and  practise 
and  practise  and  practise  and  practise  and  prac- 


20  WHEN   I  WAS  A   LITTLE   GIRL 

tise  and  practise  and  practise  —  "  or  something 
almost  as  long. 

Now  of  course  it  was  very  hard  for  her  mother 
to  say  all  this  besides  roasting  the  flesh  and 
tidying  the  cave,  so  she  made  up  her  mind  that 
when  her  Prehistoric  Husband  came  home,  he 
must  be  told  about  it.  And  when  the  sun  was 
at  the  top  of  the  sky  and  cast  no  shadow,  and 
the  flesh  was  roasted  brown  and  fragrant,  she 
dressed  it  with  pungent  herbs,  and  raked  the 
vegetables  out  of  the  ashes  and  hid  the  dessert 
in  the  cool  wall  of  the  cave  —  that  was  a  sur- 
prise —  and  spread  the  flat  rock  at  the  door  of 
the  cave  and  put  vine-leaves  in  her  hair  and, 
with  Vertebrata,  set  herself  to  wait. 

There  went  by  what  we  now  know  to  have  been 
noon,  and  another  hour,  and  more  hours,  and 
all  afternoon,  and  all  early  twilight,  and  still 
her  Prehistoric  Husband  did  not  come  home  to 
dinner.  Vertebrata  was  crying  with  hunger,  and 
the  flesh  and  the  vegetables  were  ice-cold,  and 
the  Prehistoric  Wife  and  Mother  sat  looking 
straight  before  her  without  smiling.  And  then, 
just  as  the  moon  was  rising  red  over  the  soft 
breast  of  the  distant  wood,  the  Prehistoric  Father 
appeared,  not  looking  as  if  he  had  done  anything. 


IN  NO  TIME  21 

"Is  dinner  ready  ?"  he  asked  pleasantly. 

Now  this  was  the  last  straw,  and  the  Pre- 
historic Wife  and  Mother  said  so,  standing  at 
the  door  of  the  cave,  with  Vertebrata  crying 
in  the  offing. 

"Troglodyte,"  she  said  sadly  (that  was  what 
she  called  him),  "dinner  has  been  ready  and 
ready  and  ready  and  ready  and  ready  and  ready 
and  ready  ..."  and  she  showed  him  the  ice- 
cold  roasted  flesh  and  vegetables. 

"I'm  so  sorry,  dearest.  I  never  knew,"  said 
the  Troglodyte,  contritely,  and  did  everything 
in  the  world  that  he  could  do  to  show  her  how 
sorry  he  was.  He  made  haste  to  open  his  game- 
bag,  and  he  drew  out  what  food  he  had  killed, 
and  showed  her  a  soft,  cock-of-the-rock  skin 
for  a  cap  for  her  and  a  white  ptarmigan  breast 
to  trim  it  with,  and  at  last  she  said  —  because 
nobody  can  stay  offended  when  the  offender  is 
sorry :  — 

"Well,  dear,  say  no  more  about  it.  We'll 
slice  up  the  meat  and  it  will  do  very  well  cold, 
and  I'll  warm  up  the  potatoes  with  some  bro'wn 
butter  (or  the  like).  But  hurry  and  bathe  or 
I'll  be  ready  first  again." 

So  he  hurried  and  bathed  in  the  brook,  and 


22  WHEN   I   WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

the  cave  smelled  savoury  of  the  hot  brown  but- 
ter, and  Vertebrata  had  a  Grogan  tail  stuck  in 
her  hair,  and  presently  they  sat  down  to  supper. 
And  it  was  nearly  eight  o'clock,  but  they  didn't 
know  anything  about  that. 

When  the  serious  part  of  supper  was  done, 
and  the  dessert  that  was  a  surprise  had  been 
brought  and  had  surprised  and  gone,  Verte- 
brata's  mother  sat  up  very  straight  and  looked 
before  her  without  smiling.  And  she  said:  — 

"Now,  something  must  be  done." 

"About  what,  Leaf  Butterfly  ?"  her  husband 
asked. 

"Vertebrata  doesn't  practise  enough  and  you 
don't  come  home  to  dinner  enough,"  she  an- 
swered, "and  something  must  be  done." 

"I   did   practise  —  wunst,"   said   Vertebrata. 

"But  you  should  practise  once  and  once  and 
once  and  once  and  once  and  once,  and  so  on, 
and  not  have  to  be  told  each  once,"  said  her 
mother. 

"I  did  come  home  to  dinner,"  said  the  Pre- 
historic Husband,  waving  his  hand  at  his  empty 
platter. 

"But  you  should  come  first  and  first  and  first 
and  first  and  first,  and  so  on,  and  not  let  the 


IN  NO  TIME  23 

dinner  get  ice-cold,"  said  his  wife.  "Hear  a 
thing,"  said  she. 

She  sprinkled  some  salt  all  thick  on  the  table 
and  took  the  stick  on  which  the  flesh  had  been 
roasted,  and  in  the  salt  she  drew  a  circle. 

"This,"  she  said,  "is  the  sky.  And  this  place, 
at  the  top,  is  the  top  of  the  sky.  And  when  the 
sun  is  at  the  top  of  the  sky  and  there  is  no 
shadow,  I  will  have  ready  the  dinner,  hot  and 
sweet  in  the  pot,  and  dessert  —  for  a  surprise. 
And  when  the  sun  is  at  the  top  of  the  sky  and 
there  is  no  shadow,  do  you  come  to  eat  it,  al- 
ways. That  will  be  dinner." 

"That  is  well,"  said  the  Troglodyte,  like  a  true 
knight  —  for  in  those  first  days  even  true  knights 
were  willing  that  women  should  cook  and  cave- 
tidy  for  them  all  day  long  and  do  little  else. 
But  that  was  long  ago  and  we  must  forgive  it. 

Then  she  made  a  mark  in  the  salt  at  the  edge 
of  the  circle  a  little  way  around  from  the  first 
mark. 

"When  the  sun  is  at  the  edge  of  the  sky  and 
all  red,  and  the  shadows  are  long,  and  the  dark 
is  coming,  I  will  have  ready  berries  and  nuts  and 
green  stuffs  and  sweet  syrups  and  other  things 
that  I  shall  think  of  —  for  you.  And  when  the 


24  WHEN   I  WAS  A   LITTLE  GIRL 

sun  is  at  the  edge  of  the  sky  and  all  red,  and  the 
shadows  are  long,  and  the  dark  is  coming,  do 
you  hurry  to  us,  always.  That  will  be  supper." 

"That  is  well,"  said  the  Troglodyte,  like  a 
true  knight. 

Then  she  drew  the  stick  a  long  way  round. 

"This  is  sleep,"  she  said.  "This  place  here 
is  waking,  and  breakfast.  And  then  next  the 
sun  will  be  at  the  top  of  the  sky  again.  And 
we  will  have  dinner  in  the  same  fashion.  And 
this  is  right  for  you.  But  what  to  do  with  the 
child  I  don't  know,  unless  I  keep  her  practising 
from  the  time  the  sun  is  at  the  top  of  the  sky 
until  it  is  at  the  bottom.  For  if  she  can't  play 
when  she  grows  up,  what  will  people  think?" 

Now,  while  she  said  this,  the  Prehistoric 
Woman  had  been  sitting  with  the  stick  on  which 
the  flesh  had  been  roasted  held  straight  up  in 
her  fingers,  resting  in  the  middle  of  the  ring 
which  she  had  made  in  the  salt.  And  by  now 
the  moon  was  high  and  white  in  the  sky.  And 
the  Man  saw  that  the  moon-shadow  of  the  stick 
fell  on  the  circle  from  its  centre  to  beyond  its 
edge.  And  presently  he  stretched  out  his  hand 
and  took  the  stick  from  her,  and  held  it  so  and 
sat  very  still,  thinking,  thinking,  thinking.  .  .  . 


IN  NO  TIME  25 

"Faddie,"  said  Vertebrata  —  she  called  him 
that  for  loving  —  "Faddie,  will  you  make  me  a 
little  bow  and  arrow  and  scrape  'em  white  ?" 

But  her  father  did  not  hear  her,  and  instead 
of  answering  he  sprang  up  and  began  drawing 
on  the  soft  earth  before  the  cave  a  deep,  deep 
circle,  and  he  ran  for  the  long  stick  that  had 
carried  his  game-bag  over  his  shoulder,  and  in 
the  middle  of  the  earth  circle  he  set  the  stick. 

"  Watch  a  thing  !"  he  cried. 

Vertebrata  and  her  mother,  understanding 
little  but  trusting  much,  sat  by  his  side.  And 
together  in  the  hot,  white  night  the  three 
watched  the  shadow  of  the  stick  travel  on  the 
dial  that  they  had  made.  Of  course  there  was 
no  such  thing  as  bed-time  then,  and  Vertebrata 
usually  sat  up  until  she  fell  over  asleep,  when  her 
mother  carried  her  off  to  her  little  bed  of  skins ; 
but  this  night  she  was  so  excited  that  she  didn't 
fall  over.  For  the  stick-shadow  moved  like  a 
finger ;  like,  indeed,  a  living  thing  that  had  been 
in  the  world  all  the  time  without  their  knowing. 
And  they  watched  it  while  it  went  a  long  way 
round  the  circle.  Then  her  mother  said,  "Non- 
sense, Vertebrata,  you  must  be  sleepy  now 
whether  you  know  it  or  not,"  and  she  put  her 


26  WHEN  I  WAS  A   LITTLE  GIRL 

to  bed,  Vertebrata  saying  all  the  way  that  she 
was  wide  awake,  just  like  in  the  daytime.  And 
when  her  mother  went  back  outside  the  cave, 
the  Man  looked  up  at  her  wonderfully. 

"Trachystomata,"  said  he  (which  is  to  say 
"siren"),  "if  the  sun-shadow  will  do  the  same 
thing  as  the  moon-shadow,  we  have  found  a  way 
to  make  Vertebrata  practise  enough." 

In  the  morning  when  Vertebrata  came  out 
of  the  cave  —  she  woke  alone  and  dressed  alone, 
just  like  being  grown-up  —  she  found  her  mother 
and  her  father  down  on  their  hands  and  knees, 
studying  the  circle  in  the  soft  earth  and  the 
long  sun-shadow  of  the  stick.  And  her  mother 
called  her  and  she  went  running  to  her.  And 
her  mother  said  :  — 

"Now  we  will  have  breakfast,  dear,  and  then 
you  get  your  pipes  and  come  here  and  practise. 
And  when  you  begin,  we  will  lay  a  piece  of  bone 
where  the  shadow  stands,  and  when  I  feel  the 
feeling  of  enough,  I  will  tell  you,  and  you  will 
stop  practising,  and  we  will  lay  another  piece 
of  bone  on  that  shadow.  And  after  this  you 
will  always  practise  from  one  bone  to  another, 
forever." 

Vertebrata  could  hardly  wait  to  have  break- 


IN  NO  TIME  27 

fast  before  she  tried  it,  and  then  she  ran  and 
brought  her  pipes  and  sat  down  beside  the  circle. 
And  her  father  did  not  go  to  his  hunting,  or  her 
mother  to  her  cooking  and  cave-tidying,  but  they 
both  sat  there  with  Vertebrata,  hearing  her 
pipe  and  watching  the  shadow  finger  move,  and 
waiting  till  her  mother  should  feel  the  feeling 
of  enough. 

Now!  Since  the  world  began,  the  Hours, 
Minutes,  and  Seconds  had  been  hanging  over  it, 
waiting  patiently  until  people  should  under- 
stand about  them.  But  nobody  before  had  ever, 
ever  thought  about  them,  and  Vertebrata  and  her 
mother  and  her  father  were  the  very  first  ones 
who  had  even  begun  to  understand. 

So  it  chanced  that  in  the  second  that  Verte- 
brata began  to  pipe  and  the  bone  was  laid  on 
the  circle,  that  Second  (deep  in  the  air  and  yet 
as  near  as  time  is  to  us)  knew  that  it  was  being 
marked  off  at  last  on  the  soft  circle  of  the  earth, 
and  so  did  the  next  Second,  and  the  next,  and 
the  next,  and  the  next,  until  sixty  of  them  knew 
—  and  there  was  the  first  Minute,  measured  in 
the  circle  before  the  cave.  And  other  Minutes 
knew  what  was  happening,  and  they  all  came 
hurrying  likewise,  and  they  filled  the  air  with  ex- 


28  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE   GIRL 

quisite,  invisible  presences  —  all  to  the  soft 
sound  of  little  Vertebrata's  piping.  And  she 
piped,  and  piped,  on  the  lovely,  reedy,  blow-on-it 
instrument,  and  she  made  sweet  music.  And 
for  the  first  time  in  her  little  life,  her  practising 
became  to  her  not  merely  practising,  but  music- 
making  —  there,  while  she  watched  the  strange 
Time-shadow  move. 

"  J  —  o  —  y  !"  cried  the  Seconds,  talking 
among  themselves.  "  People  are  beginning  to 
know  about  us.  It  is  time  that  they  should." 

"Ah!"  they  cried  again.  "We  can  go 
faster  than  anything." 

"Think  of  all  of  our  poor  brothers  and  sisters 
that  have  gone,  without  anybody  knowing  they 
were  here,"  they  mourned. 

"Pipe,  pipe,  pipe,"  went  Vertebrata,  and  the 
little  Seconds  danced  by  almost  as  if  she  were 
making  them  with  her  piping. 

The  Minutes,  too,  said  things  to  one  another  — 
who  knows  if  Time  is  so  silent  as  we  imagine  ? 
May  not  all  sorts  of  delicate  conversations  go 
on  in  the  heart  of  time  about  which  we  never 
know  anything  —  Second  talking  with  Second, 
and  Minute  answering  to  Minute ;  and  the  grave 
Hours,  listening  to  everything  we  say  and  seeing 


IN  NO  TIME  29 

everything  we  do,  confiding  things  to  the  Day 
about  us  and  about  Eternity  from  which  they 
have  come.  I  cannot  tell  you  what  they  say 
about  you  —  you  will  know  that,  if  you  try  to 
think,  and  especially  if  you  stand  close  to  a 
great  clock  or  hear  it  boom  out  in  the  night. 
And  I  cannot  tell  you  what  they  say  about 
Eternity.  But  I  think  that  this  may  be  one 
of  the  songs  that  they  sing:  — 

SONG    OF   THE    MINUTES 

We  are  a  garland  for  men, 
We  are  flung  from  the  first  gate  of  Time, 
From  the  touch  that  opened  the  minds  of  men 
Down  to  the  breath  of  this  rhyme. 

We  are  the  measure  of  things, 

The  rule  of  their  sweep  and  stir, 

But  whenever  a  little  girl  pipes  and  sings, 

We  will  keep  time  for  her. 

We  are  a  touching  of  hands 

From  those  in  the  murk  of  the  earth, 

Through   all   who   have   garnered   life   in   their 

hands 
And  wrought  it  from  death  unto  birth. 


30  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

We  are  the  measure  of  things, 

The  rule  of  their  stir  and  sweep, 

And  wherever  a  little  child  weeps  or  sings 

It  is  his  soul  we  keep. 

At  last,  when  sixty  Minutes  had  danced  and 
chorussed  past,  there  was,  of  course,  the  first 
rosy  Hour  ever  to  have  her  coming  and  passing 
marked  since  earth  began.  And  when  the  Hour 
was  gone,  Vertebrata's  mother  felt  the  feeling 
of  enough,  and  she  said  to  Vertebrata  :  — 

"That  will  do,  dear.  Now  you  may  go  and 
play." 

That  was  the  first  exact  hour's  practising  that 
ever  any  little  girl  did  by  any  sort  of  clock. 

"  Ribbon-fish  mine,"  said  the  Prehistoric 
Man  to  his  wife,  when  Vertebrata  had  finished, 
"I  have  been  thinking  additional  thoughts. 
Why  could  we  not  use  the  circle  in  other  ways  ?" 

"What  ways,  besides  for  your  coming  home 
and  for  Vertebrata's  practising?"  asked  the 
Prehistoric  Woman;  but  we  must  forgive  her 
for  knowing  about  only  those  two  things,  for 
she  was  a  very  Prehistoric  Woman  indeed. 

"Little  bones  might  be  laid  between  the  big 
bones,"  said  the  Man  —  and  by  that  of  course 


IN  NO  TIME  31 

he  meant  measuring  off  minutes.  "By  certain 
of  them  you  could  roast  flesh  and  not  kneel 
continually  beside  the  fire.  By  certain  of  them 
you  could  boil  eggs,  make  meet  the  cakes,  and 
not  be  in  peril  of  burning  the  beans.  Also  .  .  ." 

He  was  silent  for  a  moment,  looking  away  over 
the  soft  breast  of  the  wood  where  the  sun  was 
shining  its  utmost,  because  it  has  so  many  reasons. 

"When  I  look  at  that  moving  finger  on  the 
circle  thing,"  he  said  slowly,  "it  feels  as  if  who- 
ever made  the  sun  were  saying  things  to  me, 
but  with  no  words.  For  his  sun  moves,  and  the 
finger  on  the  circle  thing  moves  with  it  —  as  if 
it  were  telling  us  how  long  to  do  this  thing,  and 
how  long  to  do  that  thing  —  you  and  me  and 
Vertebrata.  And  we  must  use  every  space 
between  the  bones  —  and  whoever  made  the  sun 
is  telling  us  this,  but  with  no  words." 

The  Prehistoric  Woman  looked  up  at  her 
husband  wonderfully. 

"You  are  a  great  man,  Troglodyte !"  she  told 
him. 

At  which  he  went  away  to  hunt,  feeling  for 
the  first  time  in  his  prehistoric  life  as  if  there 
were  a  big  reason,  somewhere  out  in  the  air, 
why  he  should  get  as  much  done  as  he  could. 


32  WHEN   I  WAS  A   LITTLE   GIRL 

And  the  Prehistoric  Woman  went  at  her  baking 
and  cave-tidying,  but  always  she  ran  to  the  door 
of  the  cave  to  look  at  the  circle  thing,  as  if  it 
bore  a  great  message  for  her  to  make  haste,  a 
message  with  no  words. 

As  for  Vertebrata,  she  had  taken  her  pipes 
and  danced  away  where,  on  rocks  in  the  land- 
scape, the  other  little  Prehistorics  sat  about, 
getting  their  practising  done.  She  tried  to  tell 
them  all  about  the  circle  thing,  waving  her 
pipes  and  jumping  up  and  down  to  make  them 
understand,  and  drawing  circles  and  trying  to 
play  to  them  about  it  on  her  pipes ;  and  at  last 
they  understood  a  little,  like  understanding  a 
new  game,  and  they  joined  her  and  piped  on 
their  rocks  all  over  the  green,  green  place. 
And  the  Seconds  and  Minutes  and  Hours,  being 
fairly  started  to  be  measured,  all  came  trooping 
on,  to  the  sound  of  the  children's  piping. 

When  the  sun  was  at  the  top  of  the  sky,  Ver- 
tebrata remembered,  and  she  stuck  a  stick  in 
the  ground  and  saw  that  there  was  almost  no 
shadow.  So  she  left  the  other  children  and 
ran  very  hard  toward  her  own  cave.  And  when 
she  had  nearly  reached  it,  somebody  overtook 
her,  also  running  very  hard. 


SAT  ON  A  ROCK  IN  THE  LANDSCAPE  AND  PRACTISED. 


IN  NO  TIME  33 

"Faddie  !"  she  called,  as  she  called  when  she 
meant  loving  —  and  he  swung  her  up  on  his 
shoulder  and  ran  on  with  her.  And  they  burst 
into  the  open  space  before  the  cave  just  as  the 
shadow-stick  pointed  straight  to  the  top  of  the 
circle  thing. 

There,  before  the  door  of  the  cave,  was  the 
flat  rock,  all  set  with  hot  baked  meat  and  tooth- 
some piles  of  roast  vegetables  and  beans  that 
were  not  burned.  And  the  Prehistoric  Woman, 
with  vine-leaves  in  her  hair,  was  looking  straight 
before  her  and  smiling.  And  that  was  the  first 
dinner  of  the  world  that  was  ever  served  on 
time,  and  since  that  day,  to  be  late  for  dinner 
is  one  of  the  things  which  nobody  may  do ;  and 
perhaps  in  memory  of  the  Prehistoric  Woman, 
when  this  occurs,  the  politest  ladies  may  always 
look  straight  before  them  without  smiling. 

"Is  dinner  ready,  Sea  Anemone  ?"  asked  the 
Man. 

"On  the  bone,"  replied  his  wife,  pleasantly. 

"What's    for    'sert  ? "     asked    Vertebrata. 

"It's  a  surprise,"  said  her  mother  —  which 
is  always  the  proper  answer  to  that  ques- 
tion. 

And  while  they  sat  there,  the  Days  and  Weeks 


34  WHEN   I  WAS  A   LITTLE  GIRL 

and  Months  .  and  Years  were  coming  toward 
them,  faster  than  anything,  to  be  marked  off  on 
the  circle  thing  before  the  door,  and  to  be  used. 
And  they  are  coming  yet,  like  a  message  —  but 
with  no  words. 


Ill 

ONE    FOR   THE   MONEY 

WE  were  burying  snow.  Calista  Waters  had 
told  us  about  it,  when,  late  in  April,  snow  was 
found  under  a  pile  of  wood  in  our  yard.  We 
wondered  why  we  had  never  thought  of  it  before 
when  snow  was  plentiful.  We  had  two  long 
tins  which  had  once  contained  ginger  wafers. 
These  were  to  be  packed  with  snow,  fastened 
tight  as  to  covers,  and  laid  deep  in  the  earth  at 
a  distance  which,  by  means  of  spoons  and  hot 
water,  we  were  now  fast  approaching. 

It  was  Spring-in-earnest.  The  sun  was  warm, 
robins  were  running  on  the  grass,  already  faintly 
greened  where  the  snow  had  but  just  melted ; 
a  clear  little  stream  flowed  down  the  garden 
path  and  out  under  the  cross-walk.  The  Wells's 
barn-doors  stood  open,  somebody  was  beating 
a  carpet,  there  was  a  hint  of  bonfire  smoke  in 
the  air,  there  were  little  stirrings  and  sounds 
that  belonged  to  Spring  as  the  gasoline  wood- 
cutter belonged  to  Fall. 

35 


36  WHEN   I   WAS  A   LITTLE   GIRL 

Calista  was  talking. 

"And  then,"  she  said,  "some  hot  Summer 
day,  when  they're  all  sitting  out  on  the  lawn  in 
the  shade,  with  thin  dresses  and  palm-leaf  fans, 
we'll  come  and  dig  it  up,  and  carry  'em  big 
plates  of  feathery  white  snow,  with  a  spoon 
stuck  in." 

We  were  silent,  picturing  their  delight. 

"Miss  Messmore  says,"  I  ventured,  not  with- 
out hesitation,  "that  snow  is  all  bugs." 

In  fact  all  of  us  had  been  warned  without 
ceasing  not  to  eat  snow  —  but  there  were  cer- 
tain spots  where  it  was  beyond  human  power 
to  resist  it :  Mr.  Britt's  fence,  for  instance,  on 
whose  pickets  little  squares  of  snow  rested,  which, 
eaten  off  by  direct  application  of  the  lips,  pro- 
duced a  slight  illusion  of  partaking  of  caramels. 

Delia  stopped  digging.  "Maybe  they  won't 
eat  it  when  we  bring  it  to  them  in  Summer  ?" 
she  suggested. 

"Then  we  will,"  said  Calista,  promptly.  Of 
course  they  would  not  have  the  heart  to  forbid 
us  to  eat  it  in,  say,  June. 

About  a  foot  down  in  the  ground  we  set  the 
two  tins  side  by  side  in  an  aperture  lined  and 
packed  with  snow  and  filled  in  with  earth. 


ONE   FOR  THE   MONEY  37 

Over  it  we  made  a  mound  of  all  the  snow  we 
could  find  in  the  garden.  Then  we  adjourned  to 
the  woodshed  and  sat  on  the  sill  and  the  saw- 
buck  and  the  work-bench. 

"What  makes  us  give  it  away?"  said  Delia 
Dart,  abruptly.  "  Why  don't  we  sell  it  ?  We'd 
ought  to  get  fifteen  cents  a  dish  for  it  by  June." 

We  began  a  calculation,  as  rapid  as  might 
be.  Each  tin  would  hold  at  least  six  dishes. 

"Why  didn't  we  bury  more?"  said  Calista, 
raptly.  "Why  didn't  we  bury  a  tubful  ?" 

"It'd  be  an  awful  job  to  dig  the  hole,"  I  ob- 
jected. "Besides,  they'd  miss  the  tub." 

The  latter  objection  was  insurmountable,  so 
we  went  off  to  the  garden  to  hunt  pig-nuts.  A 
tree  of  these  delicacies  grew  in  the  midst  of  the 
potato  patch,  and  some  of  the  nuts  were  sure 
to  have  lain  winter-long  in  the  earth  and  to 
be  seasoned  and  edible. 

"Let's  all  ask  to  go  to  the  Rodmans'  this 
afternoon  and  tell  Margaret  Amelia  and  Betty 
about  the  snow,"  Calista  suggested. 

"I  can't,"  I  said.     "I've  got  to  go  calling." 

They  regarded  me  pityingly. 

"Can't  you  come  over  there  afterwards  ?" 
they  suggested. 


38  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

This,  I  knew,  was  useless.  We  should  not 
start  calling  till  late.  Besides,  I  should  be 
hopelessly  dressed  up. 

"Well,"  said  Delia,  soothingly,  "will  go  any- 
how. Are  you  going  to  call  where  there's 
children?" 

"I  don't  think  so,"  I  said,  darkly.  "We 
never  do." 

That  afternoon  was  one  whose  warm  air  was 
almost  thickened  by  sun.  The  maple  buds 
were  just  widening  into  little  curly  leaves ; 
shadows  were  beginning  to  show;  and  every- 
where was  that  faint  ripple  of  running  water  in 
which  Spring  speaks.  But  then  there  was  I,  in 
my  best  dress,  my  best  coat,  my  best  shoes,  my 
new  hat,  and  gloves,  faring  forth  to  make  calls. 

This  meant  merely  that  there  were  houses 
where  dwelt  certain  Grown-ups  who  expected 
me  to  be  brought  periodically  to  see  them,  an 
expectation  persevered  in,  I  believe,  solely  as 
a  courtesy  to  my  family.  Twice  a  year,  there- 
fore, we  set  out ;  and  the  days  selected  were, 
as  this  one,  invariably  the  crown  and  glory  of 
all  days  :  Days  meet  for  cleaning  out  the  play- 
house, for  occupying  homes  scraped  with  a 
shingle  in  the  softened  soil,  for  assisting  at  bon- 


ONE   FOR  THE  MONEY  39 

fires,  to  say  nothing  of  all  that  was  to  be  done 
in  damming  up  the  streams  of  the  curbs  and  turn- 
ing aside  the  courses  of  rivers. 

The  first  call  was  on  Aunt  Hoyt  —  no  true 
aunt,  of  course,  but  "aunt"  by  mutual  com- 
pliment. She  lived  in  a  tiny  house  on  Conant 
Street,  set  close  to  the  sidewalk  and  shaded  by 
an  enormous  mulberry  tree.  I  sought  out  my 
usual  seat,  a  little  hardwood  stool  to  whose 
top  was  neatly  tacked  a  square  of  Brussels 
carpeting  and  whose  cover,  on  being  lifted,  re- 
vealed a  boot-jack,  a  shoe-brush,  and  a  round 
box  of  blacking.  The  legs  were  deeply  notched, 
and  I  amused  myself  by 'fitting  my  feet  in  the 
notches  and  occasionally  coming  inadvertently 
back  to  the  floor  with  an  echoing  bump. 

Now  and  then  Aunt  Hoyt,' who  was  little  and 
wrinkled,  and  whose  glasses  had  double  lenses 
in  the  middle  so  that  I  could  not  keep  my  eyes 
from  them  when  she  spoke,  would  turn  to  ad- 
dress an  observation  at  me. 

"How  long  her  hair  is  !  Do  you  think  it  is 
quite  healthy  for  her  to  have  such  long  hair  ? 
I'll  warrant  you  don't  like  to  have  it  combed, 
do  you,  dear  ?" 

If  Aunt  Hoyt  had  only  known  the  depth  of 


40  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

the  boredom  with  which  I  had  this  inane  ques- 
tion put  to  me  !  It  was  one  of  the  wonders  of 
my  days :  the  utterly  absurd  questions  that 
grown-up  people  could  ask. 

For  example:  '"How  do  you  do  to-day?" 
What  had  any  reasonable  child  to  answer  to 
that  ?  Of  course  one  was  well.  If  one  wasn't, 
one  would  be  kept  at  home.  If  one  wasn't,  one 
wasn't  going  to  tell  anyway.  Or,  "What's  she 
been  doing  lately  ?"  Well  !  Was  one  likely  to 
reply  :  "Burying  snow.  Hunting  pig-nuts. 
Digging  up  pebbles  from  under  the  eaves. 
Making  a  secret  play-house  in  the  currant 
bushes  that  nobody  knows  about  ?"  And  un- 
less one  did  thus  tell  one's  inmost  secrets,  what 
was  there  left  to  say  ?  And  if  one  kept  a  dig- 
nified silence,  one  was  sulky  ! 

"She's  a  good  little  girl,  I'm  sure.  Is  she 
much  help  to  you  ?"  Aunt  Hoyt  asked  that 
day,  and  patted  my  hair  as  we  took  leave. 
Dear  Aunt  Hoyt,  I  know  now  that  she  was 
lonesome  and  longed  for  children  and,  like  many 
another,  had  no  idea  how  to  treat  them,  save 
by  making  little  conversational  dabs  at  them. 

Then  there  was  Aunt  Arthur,  who  lived  in  a 
square  brick  house  that  always  smelled  cool. 


ONE   FOR  THE   MONEY  41 

At  her  house  I  invariably  sat  on  a  Brussels 
"kick-about"  in  the  bay  window  and  looked  at 
a  big  leather  "Wonders  of  Earth  and  Sea," 
with  illustrations.  Sometimes  she  let  me  ex- 
amine a  basket  of  shells  that  she  herself  had 
gathered  at  the  beach  —  I  used  to  look  at  her 
hands  and  at  her  big,  flat  cameo  ring  and  marvel 
that  they  had  been  so  near  to  the  ocean.  Once 
or  twice,  when  I  wriggled  too  outrageously,  she 
would  let  me  go  into  the  large,  dim  parlour,  with 
its  ostrich  egg 'hanging  from  the  chandelier  and 
the  stuffed  blackbird  under  an  oval  glass  case 
before  the  high  mirror,  and  the  coral  piled  under 
the  centre-table  and  the  huge,  gilt-framed  land- 
scape which  she  herself  had  painted.  But  this 
day,  between  the  lace  curtains  hanging  from 
their  cornices,  I  caught  sight  of  Calista  and 
Delia  racing  up  the  hill  to  the  Rodmans,  and 
the  entire  parlour  was,  so  to  say,  poisoned.  In 
desperation  I  went  back  and  asked  for  a  drink 
of  water  —  my  ancient  recourse  when  things 
got  too  bad. 

Aunt  Barker's  was  better  —  there  was  a  baby 
there.  But  that  day  ill-luck  went  before  me, 
for  he  was  asleep  and  they  refused  to  let  me  look 
at  him,  because  they  said  that  woke  him  up. 


42  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

I  disbelieved  this,  because  I  saw  no  reason  in 
it,  and  nobody  gave  me  a  reason.  I  resolved 
to  try  it  out  the  first  time  I  was  alone  with  a 
sleeping  baby.  I  begged  boldly  to  go  outdoors, 
and  Mother  would  have  consented,  but  Aunt 
Barker  said  that  a  man  was  painting  the  lattice 
and  that  I  would  in  every  probability  lean 
against  the  lattice,  or  brush  the  paint  pots,  or 
try  to  get  a  drink  at  the  pump,  which,  I  gathered, 
splashed  everybody  for  miles  around.  So  I  sat 
in  a  patent  rocker,  and  the  only  rift  in  a  world 
of  black  cloud  was  that,  by  rocking  far  enough, 
the  patent  rocker  could  be  made  to  give  forth  a 
wholly  delectable  squeak.  Of  course  fate 
swiftly  descended ;  I  was  bidden  discontinue  the 
squeak,  and  nothing  remained  to  me. 

Then  we  went  to  Grandma  Bard's.  I  did 
not  in  the  least  know  why,  but  the  little  rag- 
carpeted  sitting-room,  the  singing  kettle  on  the 
back  of  the  coal  stove,  the  scarlet  geraniums 
on  the  window,  the  fascinating  picture  on  the 
clock  door,  all  entertained  me  at  once.  Grandma 
Bard  wore  a  black  lace  cap,  and  she  bade  me  sit 
by  her  and  instantly  gave  me  a  peppermint 
drop  from  the  pocket  of  her  black  sateen  apron. 
She  asked  me  no  questions,  but  while  she  talked 


ONE   FOR  THE  MONEY  43 

with  Mother,  she  laid  together  two  rose-coloured 
—  rose-coloured  !  —  bits  of  her  patchwork  and 
quietly  handed  them  to  me  to  baste  —  none  of 
your  close  stitches,  only  basting !  Then  she 
folded  a  newspaper  and  asked  me  to  cut  it  and 
scallop  it  for  her  cupboard  shelf.  Then  she 
found  a  handful  of  hickory  nuts  and  brought 
me  the  tack-hammer  and  a  flat-iron.  .  .  . 

"Oh,  Mother,  let's  not  go  yet,"  I  heard  myself 
saying. 

Going  home  —  a  delicate  business,  because 
stepping  on  any  crack  meant  being  poisoned 
forthwith  —  I  tried  to  think  it  out :  What  was 
it  that  Mother  and  Grandma  Bard  knew  that 
the  rest  didn't  know  ?  I  gave  it  up.  All  I 
could  think  of  was  that  they  seemed  to  know  me. 

"Isn't  Grandma  Bard  just  grand  ?"  I  ob- 
served fervently. 

"I'm  afraid,"  Mother  said  thoughtfully,  "that 
sometimes  she  has  rather  a  hard  time  to  get  on." 

I  was  still  turning  this  in  my  mind  as  we  passed 
the  wood  yard.  The  wood  yard  was  a  series 
of  vacant  lots  where  some  mysterious  person 
piled  cords  and  cords  of  wood,  which  smelled 
sweet  and  green  and  gave  out  cool  breaths. 
Sometimes  the  gasoline  wood-cutter  worked  in 


44  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE   GIRL 

there,  and  we  would  watch  till  it  had  gone,  and 
then  steal  in  and  bring  away  a  baking-powder 
can  full  of  sawdust.  We  never  knew  quite 
what  to  do  with  this  sawdust.  It  was  not 
desirable  for  mud-pies,  and  there  was  nothing 
that  we  knew  of  to  be  stuffed  with  it.  Yet 
when  we  could,  we  always  saved  it.  Perhaps 
it  gave  us  an  excuse  to  go  into  the  wood  yard, 
at  which  we  always  peeped  as  we  went  by. 
This  day,  I  lagged  a  few  steps  behind  and  looked 
in,  expectant  of  the  same  vague  thing  that  we 
always  expected,  and  never  defined  —  a  bonfire, 
a  robber,  an  open  cave,  some  changed  aspect,  I 
did  not  know  what.  And  over  by  the  sawdust 
pile,  I  saw,  stepping  about,  a  little  girl  in  a  reddish 
dress  —  a  little  girl  whom  I  had  never  seen 
before.  She  looked  up  and  saw  me  stand  staring 
at  her ;  and  her  gaze  was  so  clear  and  direct 
that  I  felt  obliged  to  say  something  in  defence 
of  my  intrusion. 

"Hello,"  I  said. 

Her  face  suddenly  brightened.  "Hello,"  she 
replied,  and  after  a  moment  she  added :  "  I 
thought  you  was  going  to  say  'how  de  do." 

A  faint  spark  of  understanding  leapt  between 
us.  Dressed-up  little  girls  usually  did  say  "how 


ONE   FOR  THE   MONEY  45 

de  do."  It  was  only  in  a  kind  of  unconscious 
deference  to  her  own  appearance  that  I  had  not 
done  so.  She  was  unkempt  and  ragged  —  her 
sleeve  was  torn  from  cuff  to  elbow. 

"What  you  doing  here?"  I  inquired,  not 
averse  to  breaking  the  business  of  calling  by  a 
bit  of  gossip. 

At  this  she  did  for  the  third  time  what  I  had 
been  vaguely  conscious  of  her  having  done :  She 
glanced  over  her  shoulder  toward  a  corner  of  the 
yard  which  the  piled  wood  concealed  from  me. 
I  stepped  forward  and  looked  there. 

On  an  end  of  wood-pile  which  we  children  had 
pulled  down  so  as  to  make  a  slope  to  ascend  its 
heights,  a  man  was  sitting.  His  head  and  shoul- 
ders were  drooping,  his  legs  were  relaxed,  and 
his  hands  were  hanging  loose,  as  if  they  were 
heavy.  His  eyes  were  closed  and  his  lips  were 
parted,  yet  about  the  face,  with  its  fair  hair 
and  beard,  there  was  something  singularly  at- 
tractive and  gentle.  He  looked  like  a  man  who 
would  tell  you  a  story. 

"Who's  he?"  I  asked,  and  involuntarily  I 
whispered. 

The  girl  began  backing  a  little  away  from  me, 
her  eyes  on  my  face,  her  finger  on  her  lips. 


46  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

"It's  my  father,"  she  said.  "He's  — resting." 
I  had  never  heard  of  a  man  resting  in  the  day- 
time. Save,  perhaps,  on  Sunday  afternoons,  this 
was  no  true  function  of  men.  I  longed  to  look 
at  the  man  and  understand  better,  but  something 
in  the  little  girl's  manner  forbade  me.  I  looked 
perplexedly  after  her.  Then  I  peered  round  the 
fence  post  and  saw  my  Mother  standing  under 
a  tree,  waiting  for  me.  She  beckoned.  I  took 
one  more  look  inside  the  fence,  and  I  saw  the 
little  girl  sit  down  beside  the  sleeping  man  and 
fold  her  hands.  The  afternoon  sun  smote 
across  the  long  wood  yard,  with  its  mysterious 
rooms  made  by  the  piling  of  the  cords.  It 
seemed  impossible  that  this  strange,  still  place, 
with  its  thick  carpet  of  sawdust  and  its  moist 
odours,  should  belong  at  all  to  the  commonplace 
little  street.  And  the  two  strange  occupants 
gave  the  last  touch  to  its  enchantment. 

I  ran  to  overtake  Mother,  and  I  tried  to  tell 
her  something  of  what  I  had  seen.  But  some 
way  my  words  gave  nothing  of  the  air  of  the 
place  and  of  the  two  who  waited  there  for  some- 
thing that  I  could  not  guess.  Already  I  knew 
this  about  words  —  that  they  were  all  very  well 
for  saying  a  thing,  but  seldom  for  letting  any- 
body taste  what  you  were  talking  about. 


ONE   FOR  THE  MONEY  47 

I  did  not  give  up  trying  to  tell  it  until  we 
passed  the  Rodmans'.  From  the  direction  of 
their  high-board  fence  I  heard  voices.  Margaret 
Amelia  and  Betty  and  Delia  and  Calista  were 
engaged  in  writing  on  the  weathered  boards  of 
the  fence  with  willows  dipped  in  the  clear- 
flowing  gutter  stream. 

"Got  it  done  ?"  I  called  mysteriously. 

They  turned,  shaking  their  heads. 

"It  was  all  melted,"  they  replied.  "We 
couldn't  find  another  bit." 

"Oh,  well,"  I  cried,  "you  come  on  over  after 
supper.  I've  got  something  to  tell  you." 

"Something  to  tell  you"  would,  of  course, 
bring  anybody  anywhere.  After  supper  they 
all  came  "over."  It  was  that  hour  which  only 
village  children  know  —  that  last  bright  day- 
light of  slanting  sun  and  driven  cows  tinkling 
homeward ;  of  front-doors  standing  open  and 
neighbours  calling  to  one  another  across  the 
streets,  and  the  sky  warm  in  the  quiet  surface 
of  some  little  water  from  whose  bridge  lads  are 
tossing  stones  or  hanging  bare-footed  from  the 
timbers.  We  withdrew  past  the  family,  sitting 
on  the  side-porch,  to  the  garden,  where  the 
sun  was  still  golden  on  the  tops  of  the  maples. 


48  WHEN   I   WAS  A  LITTLE   GIRL 

"Mother  says,"  I  began  importantly,  "that 
she  thinks  Grandma  Bard  has  a  hard  time  to 
get  along.  Well,  you  know  our  snow  ?  Well, 
you  know  you  said  you  couldn't  find  any  more 
to  bury  ?  Well,  why  don't  we  dig  up  ours, 
right  now,  and  sell  it  and  give  the  money  to 
Grandma  Bard?" 

I  must  have  touched  some  answering  chord. 
Looking  back,  I  cannot  believe  that  this  was 
wholly  Grandma  Bard.  Could  it  be  that  the 
others  had  wanted  to  dig  it  up,  independent  of 
my  suggestion  ?  For  there  was  not  one  dis- 
senting voice. 

The  occasion  seemed  to  warrant  the  best 
dishes.  I  brought  out  six  china  plates  and 
six  spoons.  These  would  be  used  for  serving 
my  own  family,  while  the  others  took  the  two 
cans  and  ran  home  with  them  to  their  fam- 
ilies. 

We  dug  rapidly  now,  the  earth  being  still 
soft.  To  our  surprise,  the  tops  of  the  tins  were 
located  much  nearer  to  the  surface  than  we  had 
supposed  after  our  efforts  of  the  morning  to 
reach  a  great  depth.  The  snow  in  which  we 
had  packed  the  cans  had  disappeared,  but  we 
made  nothing  of  that.  We  drew  out  the  cans, 


ONE   FOR  THE   MONEY  49 

had  off  their  tops,  and  gazed  distressfully  down 
into  clear  water. 

"It  went  and  melted  !"  said  Calista,  resent- 
fully. 

In  a  way,  she  regarded  it  as  her  personal 
failure,  since  the  ceremony  had  been  her  sug- 
gestion in  the  first  place. 

"Never  mind,  Calista,"  we  said,  "you  didn't 
know." 

Calista  freely  summed  up  her  impressions. 

"How  mean!"  she  said. 

We  gravely  gathered  up  the  china  plates  and 
turned  toward  the  house  —  and  now  I  was  pos- 
sessed of  a  really  accountable  desire  to  get  the 
plates  back  in  their  places  as  quickly  as  pos- 
sible. 

On  the  way  a  thought  struck  us  simulta- 
neously. Poor  Grandma  Bard  ! 

"Let's  all  go  to  see  her  to-morrow  anyhow," 
I  suggested  —  largely,  I  am  afraid,  because  the 
memory  of  my  entertainment  there  was  still 
fresh  in  my  mind. 

When,  after  a  little  while,  we  came  round  the 
house  where  the  older  ones  were  sitting,  and 
heard  them  discussing  uninteresting  affairs,  we 
regarded  them  with  real  sympathy.  They  had 


50  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

so  narrowly  missed  something  so  vastly,  absorb- 
ingly interesting. 

From  Delia's  room  a  voice  came  calling  as, 
at  intervals,  other  voices  were  heard  calling 
other  names  throughout  the  neighbourhood  — 
they  were  at  one  with  the  tinkle  of  the  bells  and 
the  far-off  yodel  of  the  boys. 

"Delia!" 

"Good  night,"  said  Delia,  briefly,  and  van- 
ished without  warning,  as  at  the  sound  of  any 
other  taps.  Soon  after,  the  others  also  dis- 
appeared ;  and  I  crept  up  on  the  porch  and 
lay  down  in  the  hammock. 

"What's  she  been  doing  now?"  somebody 
instantly  asked  me. 

For  a  moment  I  thought  of  telling;  but  not 
seriously. 

Evidently  they  had  not  expected  an  answer, 
for  they  went  on  talking. 

"...  yes,  I  had  looked  forward  to  it  for  a 
long  while.  Of  course  we  had  all  counted  on  it. 
It  was  a  great  disappointment." 

Somewhere  in  me  the  words  echoed  a  familiar 
and  recent  emotion.  So  !  They  too  had  their 
disappointments  .  .  .  even  as  we.  Of  course 
whatever  this  was  could  have  been  nothing  like 


ONE   FOR  THE   MONEY  51 

losing  a  fortune  in  melted  snow.  Still,  I  felt 
a  new  sympathy. 

Mother  turned  to  me. 

"We  are  going  to  ask  Grandma  Bard  to  come 
to  live  with  us,"  she  said.  "Will  you  like 
that?" 

I  sat  up  in  the  hammock.  "All  the  time  ?" 
I  joyfully  inquired. 

"For  the  rest  of  the  time,"  Mother  said 
soberly.  "It  seems  as  if  one  ought  to  take  a 
child,"  she  added  to  the  others,  "when  one 
takes  anybody.  .  .  ." 

"Still,"  said  father,  "till  we  get  in  our  heads 
something  of  what  the  state  owes  to  old  folks, 
there's  nobody  but  us  to  do  its  work.  .  .  ." 

I  hardly  heard  them.  To  make  this  come 
true  at  one  stroke  !  Even  to  be  able  to  adopt 
a  child !  How  easily  they  could  do  things, 
these  grown-up  ones ;  and  how  magnificently 
they  acted  as  if  it  were  nothing  at  all  ...  like 
the  giants  planting  city-seed  and  watching  cities 
grow  to  the  size  and  shape  of  giants'  flower 
beds.  .  .  . 

They  went  on  talking.  Some  of  the  things 
that  they  said  we  might  have  said  ourselves. 
In  some  ways  they  were  not  so  very  different 


52  WHEN   I  WAS  A   LITTLE  GIRL 

from  us.     Yet  think  what  they  could  accom- 
plish. 

Watching  them  and  listening,  there  in  the 
April  twilight,  I  began  to  understand.  It  was 
not  only  that  they  could  have  their  own  way. 
But  for  the  sake  of  things  that  we  had  never 
yet  so  much  as  guessed  or  dreamed,  it  was 
desirable  to  be  grown  up. 


IV 

THE    PICNIC 

IT  was  Delia  Dart  who  had  suggested  our 
Arbour  Day  picnic.  "Let's  have  some  fun 
Arbour  Day,"  she  said. 

We  had  never  thought  of  Arbour  Day  in  that 
light.  Exercises,  though  they  presented  the 
open  advantage  of  escape  from  the  school  grind, 
were  no  special  fun.  Fun  was  something  much 
more  intimate  and  intangible,  definite  and  mys- 
terious, casual  and  thrilling  —  and  other  anom- 
alies. 

"  Doing  what  ?"  we  demanded. 

"Oh,"  said  Delia,  restlessly,  "go  off  some- 
wheres.  And  eat  things.  And  do  something 
to  tell  about  and  make  their  eyes  stick  out." 

We  were  not  old  enough  really  to  have  ob- 
served this  formula  for  adventure.  Hitherto 
we  had  always  gone  merely  because  we  went. 
Yet  all  three  motives  appealed  to  us.  And 
events  fostered  our  faint  intention.  At  the 

S3 


54  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

opening  of  school  that  morning,  Miss  Messmore 
made  an  announcement.  ...  I  remember  her 
grave  way  of  smiling  and  silent  waiting,  so  that 
we  hung  on  what  she  was  going  to  say. 

"To-morrow,"  she  said,  "is  Arbour  Day. 
All  who  wish  will  assemble  here  at  the  usual 
hour  in  the  afternoon.  We  are  to  plant  trees 
and  shrubs  and  vines  about  the  schoolhouse. 
There  will  be  something  for  each  one  to  plant. 
But  this  is  not  required.  Any  who  do  not  wish 
to  be  present  may  remain  away,  and  these  will 
not  be  marked  absent.  Only  those  may  plant 
trees  who  wish  to  plant  trees.  I  hope  that  all 
children  will  take  advantage  of  their  oppor- 
tunity. Classes  will  now  pass  to  their  places." 

Delia  telegraphed  triumphantly  in  several 
directions.  We  could  hardly  wait  to  confer. 
At  recess  we  met  immediately  in  the  closet 
under  the  stairs,  a  closet  intended  primarily 
for  chalk,  erasers,  brooms,  and  maps,  but  by 
virtue  of  its  window  and  its  privacy  put  to  sub- 
uses  of  secret  committee  meetings. 

"I  told  you,"  said  Delia.  And  such  was 
Delia's  magnetism  that  we  felt  that  she  had  told 
us.  "Let's  take  our  lunch  and  start  as  soon 
as  we  get  out." 


THE   PICNIC  55 

"  Couldn't  we  go  after  the  exercises  ?"  Calista 
Waters  submitted  waveringly. 

"After!"  said  Delia,  scornfully.  "It'll  be 
three  o'clock.  That's  no  fun.  We  want  to 
start  by  twelve,  prompt,  and  stay  till  six." 

Margaret  Amelia  Rodman  bore  out  Delia's 
contention.  She  and  Betty  had  a  dozen  eggs 
saved  up  from  their  pullets.  They  would  boil 
them  and  bring  them.  "The  pullets  ?"  Calista 
demanded  aghast  and  was  laughed  into  subjec- 
tion, and  found  herself  agreeing  and  planning 
in  order  to  get  back  into  favour.  Delia  and 
the  Rodmans  were,  I  now  perceive,  born  leaders 
of  mediaeval  living. 

"Why  don't  you  wait  till  Saturday?"  I 
finally  said,  from  out  a  silence  that  had  tried  to 
produce  this  earlier.  "That's  only  two  days." 

"Saturday!"  said  Delia.  "Anybody  can 
have  a  picnic  Saturday.  This  is  most  as  good 
as  running  away." 

And  of  course  it  was.     But  .  .  . 

"Who  wants  to  plant  a  tree?"  Delia  con- 
tinued. "They'll  plant  all  they've  got  whether 
we're  here  or  not,  won't  they  ?" 

That  was  true.  They  would  do  so.  It  was 
clearly  a  selfish  wish  to  participate  that  was 


56  WHEN   I  WAS  A   LITTLE  GIRL 

agitating  Calista  and  me.  In  the  end  we 
were  outvoted,  and  we  went.  Our  families,  it 
seemed,  all  took  the  same  attitude :  We  need 
not  plant  trees  if  we  did  not  wish  to  plant  trees. 
Save  in  the  case  of  Harold  Rodman.  He  was 
ruled  to  be  too  small  to  walk  to  Prospect  Hill, 
and  he  preferred  going  back  to  school  to  staying 
at  home  alone. 

"I  won't  plant  no  tree,  though,"  he  announced 
resentfully,  as  we  left  him.  "I'm  goin'  dig  'em 
all  up  !"  he  shouted  after  us.  "Every  one  in 
the  world!" 

It  was  when  I  was  running  round  the  house 
to  get  my  lunch  that  I  came  for  the  second  time 
face  to  face  with  Mary  Elizabeth. 

Mary  Elizabeth  was  sitting  flat  on  the  ground, 
cleaning  knives  which  I  recognized  as  our  kitchen 
knives.  This  she  was  doing  by  a  simple  process, 
not  unknown  to  me  and  consisting  of  driving 
the  knife  into  the  ground  up  to  its  black  handle 
and  shoving  it  rapidly  up  and  down.  It  struck 
me  as  very  strange  that  she  should  be  there,  in 
our  back  yard,  cleaning  our  knives,  and  I  some- 
what resented  it.  For  it  is  curious  how  much 
of  a  savage  a  little  girl  in  a  white  apron  can 
really  be.  But  then  I  did  not  at  once  recognize 


THE   PICNIC  57 

her  as  the  girl  whom  I  had  seen  in  the  wood 
yard. 

I  remember  her  sometimes  as  I  saw  her  that 
day.  She  had  straight  brown  hair  the  colour 
of  my  own,  and  her  thick  pig-tail,  which  had 
fallen  over  her  shoulder  as  she  worked,  was  tied 
with  red  yarn.  Her  face  was  a  lovely,  even 
cream  colour,  with  no  freckles  such  as  diversified 
my  own  nose,  and  with  no  other  colour  in  her 
cheek.  Her  hands  were  thin  and  veined,  with 
long,  agile  fingers.  The  right  sleeve  of  her 
reddish  plaid  dress  was  by  now  slit  almost  to  the 
shoulder,  and  her  bare  arm  showed,  and  it  was 
nearly  all  wrist.  She  had  on  a  boy's  heavy 
shoes,  and  these  were  nearly  without  buttons. 

"What  you  doing?"  I  inquired,  coming  to  a 
standstill. 

She  lifted  her  face  and  smiled,  not  a  flash  of 
a  smile,  but  a  slow  smile  of  understanding  me. 

"This,"  she  replied,  and  went  on  with  her 
task. 

"What's  your  name  ?"  I  demanded. 

"Mary  Elizabeth,"  she  answered,  and  did 
not  ask  me  my  name.  This  was  her  pathetic 
way  of  deference  to  me  because  my  clothing  and 
my  "station"  were  other  than  hers. 


58  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

I  went  on  to  the  house,  but  I  went,  looking 
back. 

"Mother,"  I  said,  "who  is  she?  The  little 
girl  out  there." 

While  she  put  up  my  lunch  in  the  Indian 
basket,  Mother  told  me  how  Mary  Elizabeth 
had  come  that  morning  asking  for  something  to 
do.  She  had  set  her  to  work,  and  meanwhile 
she  was  finding  out  who  she  was.  "I  gave  her 
something  to  eat,"  Mother  said.  "And  I  have 
never  seen  even  you  so  hungry."  Hungry  and 
having  no  food.  I  had  never  heard  of  such  a 
thing  at  first  hand  —  not  nearer  than  in  books 
and  in  Sunday  school.  But  .  .  .  hungry  that 
way,  and  in  our  yard  ! 

It  was  chiefly  this  that  accounted  for  my  in- 
vitation to  her  —  this,  and  the  fact  that,  as  she 
came  to  the  door  to  tell  my  Mother  good-bye 
and  to  take  what  she  had  earned,  she  gave  me 
again  that  slow,  understanding-me  smile.  Any- 
way, as  we  walked  toward  the  gate,  I  overtook 
her  with  my  Indian  basket. 

"Don't  you  want  to  come  to  the  picnic  with 
us?"  I  said. 

She  stared  at  me.  "What  do  you  do  ?"  she 
asked. 


THE  PICNIC  59 

"Why,"  I  said,  "a  picnic  ?  Eat  in  the  woods 
and  —  and  get  things,  and  sit  on  the  grass. 
Don't  you  think  they're  fun  ?" 

"I  never  was  to  one,"  she  answered,  but  I 
saw  how  she  was  watching  me  almost  breath- 
lessly. 

"Come  on,  then,"  I  insisted  carelessly. 

"Honest?"  she  said.     "Me?" 

When  she  understood,  I  remember  how  she 
walked  beside  me,  looking  at  me  as  if  she  might 
at  any  moment  find  out  her  mistake. 

Delia,  waiting  impatiently  at  our  gate  with 
her  own  basket, —  somehow  I  never  waited  at 
the  gates  of  others,  but  it  was  always  they  who 
waited  at  mine,  —  bade  me  hurry,  stared  at  Mary 
Elizabeth,  and  serenely  turned  her  back  on  her. 

"This,"  I  said,  "is  Mary  Elizabeth.  I  asked 
her  to  go  to  our  picnic.  She's  going.  I've  got 
enough  lunch.  This  is  Delia." 

I  suppose  that  they  looked  at  each  other  fur- 
tively —  so  much  of  the  stupidity  of  being  a 
knight  with  one's  visor  lowered  yet  hangs  upon 
us  —  and  then  Delia  plucked  me,  visibly,  by 
the  sleeve  and  addressed  me,  audibly,  in  the  ear. 

"What'd  you  go  and  do  that  for  ?"  said  she. 
And  I  who,  at  an  early  age,  resented  being 


60  WHEN   I  WAS  A   LITTLE   GIRL 

plucked  by  the  sleeve  as  a  bird  resents  being 
patted  on  the  head,  or  the  wall  of  any  person- 
ality trembles  away  when  it  is  tapped,  took  Mary 
Elizabeth  by  the  hand  and  marched  on  to  meet 
the  Rodmans  and  Calista. 

Calista  was  a  vague  little  soul,  with  no  sense 
of  facts.  She  was  always  promising  to  walk 
with  two  girls  at  recess,  which  was  equivalent 
to  asking  two  to  be  her  partners  in  a  quadrille. 
It  simply  could  not  be  done.  So  Calista  was 
forever  having  to  promise  to  run  errands  with 
someone  after  school  to  make  amends  for  not 
having  walked  with  her  at  recess.  She  seldom 
had  a  grievance  of  her  own,  but  she  easily  fell 
in  with  the  grievances  of  others.  When  I  pre- 
sented Mary  Elizabeth  to  her,  Calista  received 
her  serenely  as  a  part  of  the  course  of  human 
events  ;  and  so  I  think  she  would  have  continued 
to  regard  her,  without  great  attention  and  cer- 
tainly with  no  criticism,  had  she  not  received  the 
somewhat  powerful  suggestion  of  Delia  and 
Margaret  Amelia  and  Betty  Rodman.  The 
three  fell  behind  Mary  Elizabeth  and  me  as  we 
trotted  down  the  long  street  on  which  the  April 
sun  smote  with  Summer  heat. 

"  —  over  across  the  railroad  tracks  and  picks 


THE   PICNIC  61 

up  tin  cans  and  old  rubbers  and  sells  'em  and 
drinks  just  awful  and  got  ten  children  and  got 
arrested,"  I  heard  Delia  recounting. 

"The  idea.  To  ouj*  picnic,"  said  Margaret 
Amelia's  thin-edged  voice. 

"Without  asking  us,"  Betty  whispered,  anx- 
ious to  think  of  something  of  account  to  say. 

Mary  Elizabeth  heard.  I  have  seen  that 
look  of  dumb,  unresentful  suffering  in  many  a 
human  face  —  in  the  faces  of  those  who,  by 
the  laws  of  sport  or  society  or  of  jurisprudence, 
find  no  escape.  She  had  no  anger,  and  what 
she  felt  must  have  been  long  familiar.  "I'd 
better  go  home,"  she  said  to  me  briefly. 

I  still  had  her  by  the  hand.  And  it  was,  I  am 
bound  to  confess,  as  no  errant  but  chiefly  as 
antagonist  to  the  others  that  I  pulled  her  along. 
"You  got  to  come,"  I  reminded  her.  "You 
said  you  would." 

It  was  cruel  treatment,  by  way  of  kindness. 
The  others,  quickly  adapting  themselves,  fell 
into  the  talk  of  expeditions,  which  is  never  quite 
the  same  as  any  other  talk  ;  and  the  only  further 
notice  that  they  took  of  Mary  Elizabeth  was 
painstakingly  to  leave  her  out.  They  never 
said  anything  to  her,  and  when  she  ventured 


62  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

some  faint  word,  they  never  answered  or  noticed 
or  seemed  to  hear.  In  later  years  I  have  had 
occasion  to  observe,  among  the  undeveloped, 
these  same  traces  of  tribal  antagonisms. 

As  we  went,  I  had  time  to  digest  the  hints 
which  I  had  overheard  concerning  Mary  Eliza- 
beth's estate.  I  knew  that  a  family  having 
many  children  had  lately  come  to  live  "across 
the  tracks, "  and  that,  because  of  our  anxiety  to 
classify,  the  father  was  said  to  be  a  drunkard.  I 
looked  stealthily  at  Mary  Elizabeth,  with  a 
certain  respect  born  of  her  having  experience 
so  transcending  my  own.  Telling  how  many 
drunken  men  and  how  many  dead  persons,  if 
any,  we  had  seen  was  one  of  our  modes  of  rec- 
reation when  we  foregathered.  Technically 
Mary  Elizabeth  was,  I  perceived,  one  of  the 
vague  "poor  children"  for  whom  we  had  long 
packed  baskets  and  whom  we  used  to  take  for 
granted  as  barbarously  as  they  used  to  take  for 
granted  the  plague.  Yet  now  that  I  knew  one 
such,  face  to  face,  she  seemed  so  much  less  a  poor 
child  than  a  little  girl.  And  though  she  said  so 
little,  she  had  a  priceless  manner  of  knowing 
what  I  was  driving  at,  which  not  even  Margaret 
Amelia  and  Betty  Rodman  had,  and  they  were 


THE   PICNIC  63 

the  daughters  of  an  assemblyman,  and  had  a  fur- 
nace in  their  house,  and  had  had  gold  watches 
for  Christmas.  It  was  very  perplexing. 

"  First  one  finds  a  May-flower's  going  to  be  a 
princess  !"  Delia  shouted.  Delia  was  singu- 
larly unimaginative ;  the  idea  of  royalty  was 
her  single  entrance  to  fields  of  fancy.  The 
stories  that  I  made  up  always  began  "Once 
there  was  a  fairy"  ;  Margaret  and  Betty  started 
at  gnomes  and  dwarfs ;  Calista  usually  selected 
a  poor  little  match  girl  or  a  boot-black  asleep 
in  a  piano  box ;  but  Delia  invariably  chose  a 
royal  family,  with  many  sons. 

We  ran,  shouting,  across  the  stretch  of  scrub- 
oak  which  stretched  where  the  town  blocks  of 
houses  and  streets  gave  it  up  arid  reverted  to  the 
open  country.  To  reach  this  unprepossessing 
green  place,  usually  occupied  by  a  decrepit 
wagon  and  a  pile  of  cord-wood,  was  like  passing 
through  a  doorway  into  the  open.  We  expressed 
our  freedom  by  shouting  and  scrambling  to  be 
princesses  —  all,  that  is,  save  Mary  Elizabeth. 
She  went  soberly  about,  a  little  apart,  and  I 
wished  with  all  my  heart  that  she  might  find 
the  first  May-flower ;  but  she  did  not  do  so. 

We  hunted  for  wind-flowers.     It  was  on  Pros- 


64  WHEN   I  WAS  A   LITTLE   GIRL 

pect  Hill  that  these  first  flowers  —  wind-flowers, 
pasque  flowers,  May-flowers,  however  one  has 
learned  to  say  them  —  were  found  in  Spring  — 
the  anemone  patens  which,  next  to  pussy-willows 
themselves,  meant  to  us  Spring.  A  week  before 
Nellie  Pitmouth  had  brought  to  school  the  first 
that  we  had  seen.  Nellie  had  our  pity  because 
she  drove  the  cows  to  pasture  before  she  came 
to  school,  but  she  had  her  reward,  for  it  was 
always  she  who  found  the  first  spoils.  I  re- 
member those  mornings  when  I  would  reach 
school  to  find  a  little  group  about  Nellie  in  whose 
hands  would  be  pussy-willows,  or  the  first  violets, 
or  our  rarely  found  white  violets.  For  a  little 
while,  in  the  light  of  real  events  like  these,  Nellie 
enjoyed  distinction.  Then  she  relapsed  into 
her  usual  social  obscurity  and  the  stigma  of 
her  gingham  apron  which  she  wore  even  on  half 
holidays.  This  day  we  pressed  hard  for  her 
laurels,  scrambling  in  the  deep  mould  and  dead 
leaves  in  search  of  the  star  faces  on  silvery, 
silken,  furry  stems.  We  hoped  untiringly  that 
we  might  some  day  find  arbutus,  which  grew 
in  abundance  only  eighteen  miles  away,  on  the 
hills.  In  Summer  we  patiently  looked  for 
wintergreen,  which  they  were  always  finding 


THE   PICNIC  65 

farther  up  the  river.  And  from  the  undoubted 
dearth  of  both  we  escaped  with  a  pretence  to  the 
effect  that  we  were  under  a  spell,  and  that  some 
day,  the  witch  having  died,  we  should  walk  on 
our  hill  and  find  the  wintergreen  come  and  the 
arbutus  under  the  leaves. 

By  five  o'clock  we  had  been  hungry  for  two 
hours,  and  we  spread  our  lunch  on  the  crest. 
Prospect  Hill  was  the  place  to  which  we  took 
our  guests  when  we  had  them.  It  was  the  wide 
west  gateway  of  the  town,  where  through  few 
ventured,  for  it  opened  out  on  the  bend  of  the 
little  river,  navigable  )only  to  rowboats  and 
launches,  and  flowing  toward  us  from  the  west. 
You  stood  at  the  top  of  a  sharp  declivity,  and 
it  was  like  seeing  a  river  face  to  face  to  find  it 
flowing  straight  toward  you,  out  of  the  sky, 
bearing  little  green  islands  and  wet  yellow 
sandbars.  It  almost  seemed  as  if  these  must 
come  floating  toward  us  and  bringing  us  every- 
thing. .  .  .  For  these  were  the  little  days, 
when  we  still  believed  that  everything  was  nec- 
essary. 

We  quickly  despatched  the  process  of  "trad- 
ing off,"  a  sandwich  for  an  apple,  a  cooky  for 
a  cake,  and  so  on,  occasionally  trading  back 


66  WHEN   I  WAS  A   LITTLE  GIRL 

before  the  bargain  had  been  tasted.  Mary 
Elizabeth  sat  at  one  side ;  even  after  I  had  di- 
vided my  lunch  and  given  her  my  basket  for  a 
plate,  she  sat  a  very  little  away  from  us  —  or 
it  may  be  my  remembrance  of  her  aloofness 
that  makes  this  seem  so.  Each  of  the  others 
gave  her  something  from  her  basket  —  but  it 
was  the  kind  of  giving  which  makes  one  know 
what  a  sad  word  is  the  word  "bestow."  They 
"bestowed"  these  things.  Since  that  time, 
when  I  have  seen  folk  administering  charity,  I 
have  always  thought  of  the  manner,  ill-bred  as 
is  all  condescension,  in  which  we  must  have 
shared  our  picnic  food  with  Mary  Elizabeth. 

I  believe  that  this  is  the  first  conversation  that 
ever  I  can  remember.  Up  to  this  time,  I  had 
talked  as  naturally  as  the  night  secretes  dreams, 
with  no  sense  of  responsibility  for  either  to  mean 
anything.  But  that  day  I  became  uncomfort- 
ably conscious  of  the  trend  of  the  talk. 

"I  have  to  have  my  new  dress  tried  on  before 
supper,"  Delia  announced,  her  back  to  the  river 
and  her  mouth  filled  with  a  jam  sandwich. 
"  It's  blue  plaid,  with  blue  buttons  and  blue 
tassels  on,"  she  volunteered. 

"My  new  dress  Aunt  Harriet  brought  me 


THE  PICNIC  67 

from  the  City  isn't  going  to  be  made  up  till 
last  day  of  school,"  Margaret  Amelia  informed 
us.  "It's  got  pink  flowers  in  and  it  cost  sixty 
cents  a  yard." 

"Margaret  and  I  are  going  to  have  white 
shoes  before  we  go  visiting,"  Betty  remembered. 

"I  got  two  new  dresses  that  ain't  made  up 
yet.  Mamma  says  I  got  so  many  I  don't  need 
them,"  observed  Calista,  with  an  indifferent 
manner  and  a  soft,  triumphant  glance. 
Whereat  we  all  sat  silent. 

I  struggled  with  the  moment,  but  it  was  too 
much  for  me. 

"I  got  a  white  silk  lining  to  my  new  dress," 
I  let  it  be  known.  "It's  made,  but  I  haven't 
had  it  on  yet.  China  silk,"  I  added  conscien- 
tiously. Then,  moved  perhaps  by  a  common 
discomfort,  we  all  looked  toward  Mary  Eliza- 
beth. I  think  I  loved  her  from  that  moment. 

"None  of  you's  got  the  new  style  sleeves," 
she  said  serenely,  and  held  aloft  the  arm  whose 
sleeve  was  slit  from  wrist  to  shoulder. 

We  all  laughed  together,  but  Delia  pounced 
upon  the  arm.  She  caught  and  held  it. 

"What's  that  on  your  arm  ?"  she  cried,  and 
we  all  looked.  From  the  elbow  up  the  skin  was 


68  WHEN   I   WAS  A  LITTLE   GIRL 

mottled  a  dull,  ugly  purple,  as  if  rough  hands 
had  been  there. 

Mary  Elizabeth  flushed.  "Ain't  you  ever  had 
any  bruises  on  you  ?"  she  inquired  in  a  tone  so 
finely  modulated  that  Delia  actually  hastened 
to  defend  herself  from  the  impeachment  of 
inexperience. 

"Sure,"  she  said  heartily.  "I  counted  'em 
last  night.  I  got  seven." 

"I  got  five  and  a  great  long  skin,"  Betty  com- 
peted hotly. 

"Pooh,"  said  Calista,  "I've  got  a  scratch 
longer  than  my  hand  is.  Teacher  said  maybe 
I'd  get  an  infect,"  she  added  importantly. 

Then  we  kept  on  neutral  ground,  such  as 
blank-books  and  Fourth  of  July  and  planning 
to  go  bare-foot  some  day,  until  Calista  attacked 
a  pickled  peach  which  she  had  brought. 

"Our  whole  cellar's  full  of  pickled  peaches," 
I  incautiously  observed.  "I  could  have  brought 
some  if  I'd  thought." 

"We  got  more  than  that,"  said  Delia,  instantly. 
"We  got  a  thousand  glasses  of  jelly  left  over 
from  last  year." 

"A  thousand!"  repeated  Margaret  Amelia, 
in  derision.  "A  hundred,  you  mean." 


THE   PICNIC  69 

"Well,"  Delia  said,  "it's  a  lot.  And  jars  and 
jars  and  jars  of  preserves.  And  cans  and 
cans  and  cans.  .  .  ." 

The  others  took  it  up.  Why  we  should  have 
boasted  of  the  quantity  of  fruit  in  our  parents' 
cellars,  I  have  no  notion,  save  that  it  was  for 
the  unidentified  reason  which  impels  all  boast- 
ing. When  I  am  in  a  very  new  bit  of  country, 
where  generalizations  and  multiplications  follow 
every  fact,  I  am  sometimes  reminded  of  the 
fashion  of  our  talk  whose  statements  tried  to 
exceed  themselves,  in  a  kind  of  pyrotechnic 
pattern  bursting  at  last  into  nothing  and  the 
night.  We  might  have  been  praising  climate 
or  crops  or  real  estate. 

Mary  Elizabeth  spoke  with  something  like 
eagerness. 

"We  got  a  bottle  of  blackberry  cordial  my 
grandmother  made  before  she  died,"  she  said. 
"We  keep  it  in  the  top  bureau  drawer." 

"What  a  funny  place  to  keep  it  .  .  ."  Delia 
began,  and  stopped  of  her  own  accord. 

I  remember  that  everybody  was  willing 
enough  to  let  Mary  Elizabeth  help  pick  up 
the  dishes.  Then  she  took  a  tree  for  Pussy- 
wants-a-corner,  which  always  follows  the  picnic 


70  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

part  of  a  picnic.  But  hardly  anyone  would 
change  trees  with  her,  and  by  the  design  which 
masks  as  chance,  everyone  ran  to  another  tree. 
At  last  she  casually  climbed  her  tree,  agile  as 
a  cat,  a  feat  which  Delia  alone  was  shabby 
enough  to  pretend  not  to  see. 

We  started  homeward  when  the  red  was 
flaming  up  in  the  west  and  falling  deep  in  the 
heart  of  the  river.  By  then  Mary  Elizabeth 
was  almost  at  ease  with  us,  but  rather,  I  think, 
because  of  the  soft  evening,  and  perhaps  in 
spite  of  our  presence. 

"Oh!"  she  cried.  "Somebody  grabbed  the 
sun  and  pulled  it  down.  I  saw  it  go  !" 

Delia  looked  shocked.  "You  oughtn't  to 
tell  such  things,"  she  reproved  her. 

Mary  Elizabeth  flung  up  the  arm  with  the 
torn  sleeve  and  ran  beside  us,  laughing  with 
abandon.  We  were  all  running  down  the  slope 
in  the  red  light. 

"We're  Indians,  looking  for  roots  for  the 
medicine-man,"  Delia  called;  "Yellow  Thunder 
is  sick.  So  is  Red  Bird.  We're  hunting  roots." 

She  was  ahead  and  we  were  following.  We 
caught  at  the  dead  mullein  stalks  and  milk- 
weed pods  and  threw  them  away,  and  leaped  up 


THE   PICNIC  71 

and  pulled  at  the  low  branches  with  their  tender 
buds.  We  were  filled  with  the  flow  of  the  Spring 
and  seeking  to  express  it,  as  in  the  old  barbaric 
days,  by  means  of  destruction.  ...  At  the  foot 
of  the  slope  a  little  maple  tree  was  growing, 
tentative  as  a  sunbeam  and  scarcely  thicker, 
left  by  the  Spring  that  had  last  been  that  way. 
When  she  reached  it,  Delia  laid  hold  on  it,  and 
had  it  out  by  its  slight  root,  and  tossed  it  on  the 
moss. 

"W-h-e-e-e !"  cried  Delia,  "I  wish  it  was 
Arbour  Day  to-morrow  too  !" 

Mary  Elizabeth  stopped  laughing.  "I  turn 
here,"  she  said.  "It's  the  short  cut.  Good-bye 
—  I  had  a  grand  time.  The  best  time  I  ever 
had." 

Delia  pretended  not  to  hear.  She  said 
nothing.  The  others  called  casual  good-byes 
over  shoulder.  Going  home,  they  rebuked  me 
soundly  for  having  invited  Mary  Elizabeth. 
Delia  rehearsed  the  array  of  reasons.  If  she 
came  to  school,  we  would  have  to  know  her, 
she  wound  up.  I  remember  feeling  baffled  and 
without  argument.  All  that  they  said  was  true, 
and  yet  — 

"I'm  going  to  see  her,"  I  announced  stoutly, 


72  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

more,  I  dare  say,  because  I  was  tired  and  a 
little  cross  than  from  real  loyalty. 

"You'll  catch  some  disease,"  said  Delia.  "I 
know  a  girl  that  went  to  see  some  poor  children 
and  she  caught  the  spinal  appendicitis  and  died 
before  she  got  back  home." 

We  went  round  by  the  schoolhouse,  drawn 
there  by  a  curiosity  that  had  in  it  inevitable 
elements  of  regret.  There  they  were,  little  dead- 
looking  trees,  standing  in  places  of  wet  earth, 
and  most  of  them  set  somewhat  slanting. 
Everyone  was  gone,  and  in  the  late  light  the 
grounds  looked  solemn  and  different. 

"Just  think,"  said  Delia,  "when  we  grow  up 
and  the  trees  grow  up,  we  can  tell  our  children 
how  we  planted  'em." 

"Why,  we  never — "  Calista  began. 

"Our  school  did,  didn't  it  ?"  Delia  contended. 
"And  our  school's  we,  isn't  it  ?" 

But  we  overruled  her.  No,  to  the  end  of 
time,  the  trees  that  stood  in  those  grounds  would 
have  been  planted  by  other  hands  than  ours. 
We  were  probably  the  only  ones  in  the  school 
who  hadn't  planted  a  tree.  "I  don't  care,  do 
you  ?"  we  demanded  of  one  another,  and  re- 
iterated our  denial. 


THE   PICNIC  73 

"I  planted  a-a-a- — Never-green!"  Harold 
Rodman  shouted,  running  to  meet  us. 

"So  did  we  !"  we  told  him  merrily,  and  sep- 
arated, laughing.  It  had,  it  seemed,  been  a 
great  day,  in  spite  of  Mary  Elizabeth. 

I  went  into  the  house,  and  hovered  about  the 
supper  table.  I  perceived  that  I  had  missed  hot 
waffles  and  honey,  and  these  now  held  no  charm. 
Grandmother  Beers  was  talking. 

"When  I  was  eight  years  old,"  she  said,  "I 
planted  it  by  the  well.  And  when  Thomas 
went  back  to  England  fifty  years  after,  he 
couldn't  reach  both  arms  round  the  trunk. 
And  there  was  a  seat  there  —  for  travellers." 

I  looked  at  her,  and  thought  of  that  giant 
tree.  Would  those  dead-looking  little  sticks, 
then,  grow  like  that  ? 

"  If  fifty  thousand  school  children  each  planted 
a  tree  to-day,"  said  my  mother,  "that  would 
be  a  forest.  And  planting  a  forest  is  next  best 
to  building  a  city." 

"Better,"  said  my  father,  "better.  What  kind 
of  tree  did  you  plant,  daughter  ?"  he  inquired. 

I  hung  my  head.  "I  —  we  —  there  was  a 
picnic,"  I  said.  "We  didn't  have  to  plant  'em. 
So  we  had  a  picnic." 


74  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

My  father  looked  at  me  in  the  way  that  I 
remember. 

"That's  it,"  he  said.  "For  everyone  who 
plants  a  tree,  there  are  half  a  dozen  that  have 
a  picnic.  And  two  dozen  that  cut  them  down. 
At  last  we've  got  one  in  the  family  who  belongs 
to  the  majority  !" 

When  I  could,  I  slipped  out  in  the  garden.  It 
was  darkening ;  the  frogs  in  the  Slough  were 
chorussing,  and  down  on  the  river-bank  a  cat- 
bird sang  at  intervals,  was  silent  long  enough 
to  make  you  think  that  he  had  ceased,  and  then 
burst  forth  again.  The  town  clock  struck  eight, 
as  if  eight  were  an  ancient  thing,  full  of  dignity. 
Our  kitchen  clock  answered  briskly,  as  if  eight 
were  a  proud  and  novel  experience  of  its  own. 
The  'bus  rattled  past  for  the  Eight-twenty. 
And  away  down  in  the  garden,  I  heard  a  step. 
Someone  had  come  in  the  back  gate  and  clicked 
the  pail  of  stones  that  weighted  its  chain. 

I  thought  that  it  would  be  one  of  the  girls, 
who  not  infrequently  chose  this  inobvious 
method  of  entrance.  I  ran  toward  her,  and  was 
amazed  to  find  Mary  Elizabeth  kneeling  quietly 
on  the  ground,  as  she  had  been  when  I  came 
upon  her  at  noon. 


THE   PICNIC  75 

"What  you  doing?"  I  demanded,  before  I 
could  see  what  she  was  doing. 

"This,"  she  said. 

I  stooped.  And  she  had  a  little  maple  tree, 
for  which  she  was  hollowing  a  home  with  a 
rusty  fire-shovel  that  she  had  brought  with 
her. 

"It's  the  one  Delia  Dart  pulled  out,"  she  said. 
"I  thought  it'd  be  kind  of  nice  to  put  it  here. 
In  your  yard.  You  could  bring  the  water,  if 
you  want." 

I  brought  the  water.  Together  we  bent  in 
the  dusk,  and  we  set  out  the  little  tree,  near  the 
back  gate,  close  to  my  play-house. 

"We'd  ought  to  say  a  verse  or  something,"  I 
said  vaguely. 

"I  can't  think  of  any,"  Mary  Elizabeth  ob- 

, 
jected. 

Neither  could  I,  but  you  had  to  say  some- 
thing when  you  planted  a  tree.  And  a  line  was 
as  good  as  a  verse. 

"'God  is  love'  's  good  enough,"  said  Mary 
Elizabeth,  stamping  down  the  earth.  Then  we 
dismissed  the  event,  and  hung  briefly  above  the 
back  gate.  Somehow,  I  was  feeling  a  great  and 
welcome  sense  of  relief. 


76  WHEN   I  WAS  A   LITTLE   GIRL 

"It  was  kind  o'  nice  to  do  that,"  I  observed, 
with  some  embarrassment. 

"No,  it  wasn't  either,"  rejoined  Mary  Eliza- 
beth, modestly. 

We  stood  kicking  at  the  gravel  for  a  moment. 
Then  she  went  away. 

I  faced  about  to  the  quiet  garden.  And  sud- 
denly, for  no  reason  that  I  knew,  I  found  myself 
skipping  on  the  path,  in  the  dark,  just  as  if  the 
day  were  only  beginning. 


THE    KING'S    TRUMPETER 

AND  so  it  is  for  that  night  long  ago  when  Mary 
Elizabeth  and  I  stood  by  the  tree  and  tried  to 
think  of  something  to  say,  that  after  all  these 
years  I  have  made  the  story  of  Peter. 

Long  years  ago,  when  the  world  was  just 
beginning  to  be,  there  was  a  kingdom  which 
was  not  yet  finished.  Of  course  when  a  world 
has  just  stopped  being  nothing  and  is  beginning 
to  be  something,  it  takes  a  great  while  to  set  all 
the  kingdoms  going.  And  this  one  wasn't 
done. 

For  example,  in  the  palace  garden  where 
little  Peter  used  to  play,  the  strangest  things 
were  to  be  met.  For  the  mineral  kingdom  was 
just  beginning  to  be  vegetable,  and  the  vegetable 
was  just  beginning  to  be  animal,  and  the  animal 
was  just  beginning  to  be  man,  —  and  man  was 
just,  just  beginning  to  know  about  his  living 

77 


78  WHEN   I  WAS  A   LITTLE   GIRL 

spirit.  Do  you  see  what  that  means  ?  While 
you  looked  at  a  mound  of  earth  it  became  a 
bush  —  or  a  very  little  time  afterward,  as  time 
in  these  things  is  reckoned.  While  you  looked 
at  a  beast-shaped  bush  —  all  bushes  at  night 
are  shaped  like  beasts  —  it  became  a  living 
animal  —  or,  again,  a  very  little  afterward.  And 
men  had  by  no  means  got  over  being  apes, 
tigers,  swine,  and  dogs,  and  sometimes  you 
hardly  knew  which  a  man  was,  a  real  man  or 
one  of  these  animals.  And  spirits  were  growing 
in  men  as  fast  as  this  might  be.  Everything, 
you  see,  lay  in  savage  angles  and  wild  lines. 

Little  Peter  was  playing  one  morning  in  the 
palace  garden,  and  such  playing  as  it  was  !  He 
would  be  moulding  little  balls  of  loam  and  fash- 
ioning them  with  seeds,  when  suddenly  they 
would  break  into  life  as  buds  and  then  as  flowers, 
almost  as  one  now  sees  twigs  of  wood  break 
into  life,  or  as  quiet  cocoons  become  living 
butterflies  —  for  the  world  is  not  so  different. 
Or  Peter  would  be  playing  with  a  spongy- 
looking  mass  on  a  rock  in  the  brook,  when  it 
would  break  from  its  rock  and  go  gayly  swim- 
ming about,  and  be  a  fish-thing.  Or  he  would 
push  at  a  bit  of  ooze  with  a  cat-tail,  and  a  little 


THE   KING'S  TRUMPETER  79 

flying  life  would  mount  abruptly  and  wing 
away.  It  was  exciting  playing  in  those  days, 
and  some  of  the  things  you  can  do  in  these  days. 
Only  then  it  was  all  new,  so  Peter  could  see  just 
how  wonderful  it  was. 

Now,  that  morning  the  king  was  walking  in  his 
palace  garden.  And  he  was  troubled,  for  every- 
where that  he  looked  there  were  loose  ends  and 
rough  edges,  and  shapeless  things  waiting  to 
be  fashioned,  and  it  was  so  all  over  his  kingdom. 
There  was  such  a  great  lot  to  do  that  he  could 
not  possibly  do  it  all  alone  —  no  king,  however 
industrious,  could  have  done  it  all.  And  he 
longed  for  the  help  of  all  his  subjects.  So  when 
the  king  came  on  little  Peter,  busily  making 
living  things  where  none  had  been  before,  he 
was  mightily  pleased,  and  he  sat  down  with  the 
little  lad  on  a  grassy  platform  in  the  midst  of 
the  garden. 

"Lo,  now,  little  lad,"  said  the  king,  "what  do 
you  play  ?" 

Instead  of  playing  at  keeping  store  or  keeping 
house  or  at  acting  or  hunting  or  exploring,  little 
Peter  was  playing  another  game, 

"I'm  playing  it's  creation,  your  majesty,"  he 
answered,  "and  I'm  playing  help  the  king." 


8o  WHEN   I  WAS   A   LITTLE  GIRL 

"Lo,  now,"  said  the  king,  "I  would  that  all 
my  subjects  would  play  as  well  as  you." 

The  king  thought  for  a  moment,  looking  out 
on  all  the  savage  angles  and  wild  lines,  while 
little  Peter  watched  a  bit  of  leaf  mould  becom- 
ing a  green  plant. 

"Summon  me  my  hundred  heralds  !"  the  king 
suddenly  bade  his  servants. 

So  the  servants  summoned  the  hundred  her- 
alds, who  hurried  into  their  blue  velvet  and 
silver  buckles  and  came  marching,  twenty 
abreast,  across  the  grassy  plateau,  where  the 
morning  sun  made  patterns  like  wings,  and 
among  the  wings  they  bowed  themselves  and 
asked  the  king  his  will. 

"Hundred  heralds,"  said  the  king,  "be  it 
only  that  you  do  this  willingly,  I  would  that  you 
go  out  into  my  kingdom,  into  its  highways  and 
even  to  its  loneliest  outposts,  and  take  my  people 
my  message.  Cry  to  them,  until  each  one  hears 
with  his  heart  as  well  as  his  head:  'The  world 
is  beginning.  You  must  go  and  help  the  king." 

Now,  little  Peter,  when  he  heard  the  message, 
rose  and  stood  beside  the  king,  and  in  his  breast 
something  thrilled  and  trembled  like  a  smitten 
chord.  But  as  for  the  hundred  heralds,  they 


THE   KING'S   TRUMPETER  81 

were  troubled  as  one  man  —  though  he  not  yet 
wholly  a  man. 

"O  king,"  they  said,  twenty  at  a  time,  "blue 
velvet  and  silver  buckles  are  meet  for  the  streets 
of  cities  and  to  call  men  to  feasting  and  to 
honour  the  king.  But  as  for  the  highways  and 
the  loneliest  outposts  —  that  is  another  matter." 

"But  what  of  the  message  ?"  the  king  asked 
sadly,  and  this  none  of  the  heralds  knew  how  to 
answer ;  and  presently  the  king  sent  them  away, 
for  he  would  never  have  unwilling  service  in 
his  palace  or  in  his  kingdom.  And  as  they  went, 
little  Peter  looked  after  them,  and  he  saw,  and 
the  king  saw,  that  for  all  their  blue  velvet  and 
silver  buckles,  the  hundred  heralds,  marching 
away  twenty  abreast,  were  not  yet  all  men,  but 
partly  they  were  apes  in  manner  and  swine  at 
heart.  And  little  Peter  wondered  if  he  fashioned 
them  as  he  did  his  bits  of  mould,  whether  they 
would  burst  from  a  sheath,  all  men,  as  burst  his 
little  plants. 

"Summon  me  my  thousand  trumpeters  !" 
the  king  bade  his  servants  next. 

The  thousand  trumpeters  hurried  into  their 
purple  velvet  and  their  lace  collars  and  seized 
their  silver  trumpets,  and  came  marching  fifty 


82  WHEN   I   WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

abreast  across  the  grassy  plateau,  where  the 
noon  sun  made  a  blinding  light,  like  the  light 
of  another  sun ;  and  they  bowed  themselves 
in  the  brightness  and  asked  the  king  his  will. 

But  when  the  king  had  told  them  his  will 
and  had  repeated  the  message  and  asked  them 
if  they  could  go  willingly,  the  thousand  trump- 
eters were  troubled  as  one  man  —  and  he  not 
yet  wholly  a  man. 

"O  king,"  said  they,  in  fifties  and  one  hun- 
dreds, "lo,  now,  these  silver  trumpets.  These 
are  meet  to  sound  up  and  down  the  streets  of 
cities  and  to  call  men  to  feasting  and  to  honour 
the  king,  and  never  are  they  meet  to  sound  in  the 
lonely  outposts.  Pray  thee,  O  king,  keep  us 
near  thee." 

"But  what  of  the  message  ?"  the  king  asked, 
and  none  of  his  trumpeters  could  help  him  there, 
and  he  would  have  no  unwilling  service  in  his 
palace  or  in  his  kingdom,  so  he  sent  them  all 
away.  And  as  they  went,  little  Peter  looked 
after  them,  and  he  saw,  and  the  king  saw,  that 
for  all  their  purple  velvet  and  lace  collars,  the 
thousand  trumpeters,  marching  away  fifty 
abreast,  were  not  all  men,  but  they  were  apes  in 
manner  and  swine  and  hounds  at  heart.  And 


THE   KING'S   TRUMPETER  83 

little  Peter  almost  wished  that  he  could  fashion 
them  as  he  did  his  bits  of  mould  and  see  if  they 
would  not  change  into  something  better. 

So  then  the  king  called  a  meeting  of  his  High 
Council,  and  his  councillors  hurried  into  their 
robes  of  state  and  appeared  on  the  grassy  pla- 
teau when  the  evening  was  lighting  the  place 
to  be  a  glory. 

"Lo,  now,"  said  the  king,  "I  needs  must  send 
a  message  to  all  my  people.  Let  us  devise  or 
dream  some  way  to  take  it." 

When  they  heard  the  message,  the  councillors 
nodded,  with  their  hands  over  their  mouths, 
looking  at  the  ground. 

Then  the  king  said  —  there,  in  the  beginning 
of  the  world  :  — 

"I  have  a  thought  about  a  wire  which  shall 
reach  round  the  earth  and  oversea  and  undersea, 
on  which  a  man  may  send  a  message.  And  a 
thought  I  have  about  a  wire  which  shall  stretch 
across  the  land,  and  upon  that  wire  a  voice  may 
travel  alone.  And  a  thought  about  messages 
that  shall  pierce  the  air  with  no  wire  and  no 
voice.  But  none  of  these  things  is  now." 

("Nay,"  said  the  council,  murmuring  among 
themselves,  "  or  ever  shall  be.") 


84  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

"--and  if  they  were,"  said  the  king,  "I 
would  have  one  serve  me  even  better  than  these, 
to  reach  the  head  and  the  heart  of  my  people. 
How  shall  I  do  this  thing  ?  For  I  must  have 
help  in  finishing  my  kingdom." 

The  council,  stepping  about  in  the  slanting 
light,  disputed  the  matter,  group  by  group,  but 
there  lay  nowhere,  it  seemed,  a  conclusion. 

"You  yourselves,"  the  king  cried  at  last, 
"who  know  well  that  the  kingdom  must  be 
completed,  you  yourselves  gather  the  people  in 
multitudes  together  and  tell  them  the  message." 

But  at  this  the  High  Council  twitched  their 
robes  of  state  and  would  have  none  of  it. 

"Who  would  sit  in  the  high  places  if  we  did 
that?"  said  they. 

So  the  king  sent  them  all  away,  and  little 
Peter,  standing  beside  the  king,  looked  after 
them.  And  he  saw,  and  the  king  saw,  how, 
under  their  robes  of  state,  the  High  Council  had 
not  entirely  stopped  being  ape  and  swine  and 
hound  and  tiger  and,  early  in  the  world  as  it 
was,  still  there  seemed  no  great  excuse  for 
that. 

"Oh,  sire,"  said  little  Peter,  "I  wish  I  could 
play  with  them  as  I  play  with  my  bits  of  mould 


THE    KING'S   TRUMPETER  85 

and  loam  and  could  turn  them  into  something 
better  and  alive." 

"Well  said,  little  Peter,"  replied  the  king, 
smiling  sadly. 

And  now  the  west,  which  had  been  like  a  vast, 
stained-glass  window,  streaming  with  warm  light, 
fell  into  gray  opaqueness,  and  the  grassy  plateau 
became  a  place  of  shadows  in  which  night  things 
were  born  gently.  And  the  king  looked  away 
to  the  beast-shaped  bushes  and  to  all  the  striving 
land. 

"Oh,  my  kingdom,  my  kingdom  !"  he  cried, 
grieving.  "Now,  would  that  this  little  Peter 
here  could  help  you  in  the  making." 

And  then  little  Peter  stood  upright  in  the 
faint  light. 

"May  it  please  the  king,"  he  said  softly,  "I 
will  take  the  message  to  his  people." 

The  king  stared  down  at  him. 

"You?"  he  said.  "You,  little  man?  And 
how,  pray,  would  you  take  my  message?" 

"May  it  please  the  king,"  said  little  Peter, 
"I  would  tell  everyone  in  the  kingdom  till  all 
should  have  been  told." 

"Little  man,"  said  the  king,  "you  are  no 
bigger  than  a  trumpet." 


86  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

"Ay,"  said  the  little  lad,  "I  think  that  is 
what  I  am.  I  would  that  I  be  not  Peter,  but 
Trumpeter.  So  send  me  forth." 

At  this  the  king  laughed,  and  for  the  laughter 
his  heart  was  the  lighter.  He  touched  the  boy's 
brow. 

"  See,  then,  I  touch  your  brow,  little  Trump- 
eter," he  said.  "Go  forth  —  and  do  you  know 
my  message  ?" 

"You  had  first  touched  my  heart,  your  maj- 
esty," said  the  little  boy,  "and  the  message  is 
there." 

You  would  think,  perhaps,  that  Peter  would 
have  waited  till  the  morning,  but  he  would  not 
wait  an  hour.  He  made  a  little  packet  of  linen 
and  of  food,  and  just  as  the  folk  within  the 
palace  were  beginning  their  evening  revelry,  he 
stepped  out  on  the  highway  and  fared  forth 
under  the  moon. 

But  fancy  walking  on  such  a  highway  as  that ! 
At  first  glance  it  looked  like  any  other  night 
road,  stretching  between  mysterious  green.  But 
not  anything  there  could  be  depended  upon  to 
stay  as  it  was.  A  hillock,  lying  a  little  way 
ahead,  became,  as  he  reached  it,  a  plumy 
shrub,  trembling  with  amazement  at  its  trans- 


THE    KING'S   TRUMPETER  87 

formation  from  dead  earth  to  living  green.  At 
a  turn  in  the  road,  a  low  bush  suddenly  walked 
away  into  the  wood,  a  four-footed  animal. 
Everything  changed  as  he  looked  at  it,  as  if 
nothing  were  meant  to  be  merely  what  it  was. 
The  world  was  beginning  ! 

At  the  foot  of  a  hill,  where  the  shadows  were 
thick,  Peter  met  the  first  one  to  whom  he  could 
give  his  message.  The  man  was  twisted  and 
ragged  and  a  beggar,  and  he  peered  down  in 
Peter's  face  horribly. 

"Sir,"  said  Peter,  courteously,  "the  world  is 
beginning.  You  must  go  and  help  the  king." 

"Help  the  king!"  cried  the  beggar,  and 
his  voice  was  uneven,  like  a  bark  or  a  whine 
that  was  turning  into  words.  "I  can't  help 
the  king  without  my  supper." 

"Supper  is  only  supper,"  said  little  Peter, 
who  had  never  in  his  life  been  hungry.  "One 
must  help  the  king  —  that  is  more." 

The  beggar  struck  the  ground  with  his  staff. 

"I'm  hungry,"  he  said  like  a  bark.  "I  want 
some  supper  and  some  dinner  and  all  the  way 
back  to  breakfast  before  I  help  the  king,  world 
or  no  world  !" 

And  suddenly  little  Peter  understood  what  it 


88  WHEN   I  WAS   A   LITTLE   GIRL 

is  to  be  hungry,  and  that,  if  folk  were  hungry, 
they  must  first  find  means  of  feeding  themselves 
before  they  could  listen.  So  he  gave  the  beggar 
all  that  he  had  of  food  in  his  packet,  which  was 
the  least  that  he  could  do,  and  sent  him  on  his 
way,  charging  him  with  the  message. 

At  the  top  of  the  hill,  Peter  came  on  another 
man,  sitting  under  a  sycamore  tree.  The  man 
was  a  youth,  and  very  beautiful,  and  he  was 
making  a  little  song,  which  went  like  this  :  — 

"Open,  world,  your  trembling  petals  slowly, 
Here  one,  there  one,  natal  to  its  hour, 
Toward  the  time  when,  holden  in  a  vessel  holy, 
You  shall  be  a  flower  " 

Though  Peter  did  not  know  what  the  song 
might  mean,  yet  it  fell  sweetly  upon  the  night, 
and  he  liked  to  listen.  And  when  it  was  done, 
he  went  and  stood  before  the  youth. 

"Sir,"  he  said,  "the  world  is  beginning.  You 
must  go  and  help  the  king." 

"I  know,  I  know,  little  lad,"  said  the  youth, 
and  his  voice  was  clear,  like  bird-notes  that 
were  turning  into  words.  "I,  too,  tell  the  mes- 
sage, making  it  in  a  song." 

And  these  words  made  Peter  glad,  so  that  his 


THE   KING'S   TRUMPETER  89 

strength  was  new,  and  he  ran  on  with  the  poet's 
gentle  music  in  his  ears. 

I  cannot  tell  you  how  far  Peter  went,  but  he 
went  very  far,  and  to  many  a  lonely  outpost, 
and  away  and  away  on  a  drear  frontier.  It  was 
long  to  go  and  hard  to  do,  but  that  is  the  way 
the  world  is  made ;  and  little  Peter  went  on, 
now  weary,  now  frightened,  now  blithe,  now  in 
good  company,  now  alone  and  in  the  dark.  I 
cannot  tell  you  all  the  adventures  he  had  and 
all  the  things  he  did  —  perhaps  you  will  know 
these  in  some  other  way,  sometime.  And 
there  were  those  to  whom  he  told  the  message 
who  listened,  or  set  out  in  haste  for  the  king's 
palace ;  and  some  promised  that  they  would  go 
another  day,  and  a  few  ran  to  tell  others.  But 
many  and  many  were  like  the  hundred  heralds 
and  the  thousand  trumpeters  and  the  king's 
High  Council,  and  found  many  a  reason  why 
they  might  not  set  out.  And  some  there  were 
who  mocked  Peter,  saying  that  the  world  indeed 
was  doing  very  well  without  their  help  and  would 
work  itself  out  if  only  one  would  wait ;  and 
others  would  not  even  listen  to  the  little  lad. 

At  last,  one  morning  when  the  whole  world 
seemed  glad  that  it  was  beginning  and  seemed  to 


90  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

long  to  tell  about  it,  little  Peter  entered  a  city, 
decorated  for  a  festival.  Everywhere  were 
garlands  of  vines  and  of  roses,  bright  rugs  and 
fluttering  pennons  and  gilded  things,  as  if  the 
world  had  been  long  enough  begun  so  that  al- 
ready there  were  time  to  take  holidays.  The 
people  were  flooding  the  streets  and  crowding 
the  windows,  and  through  their  holiday  dress 
Peter  could  see  how  some  minced  and  mocked  a 
little  like  apes,  and  others  peered  about  like 
giraffes,  and  others  ravened  for  food  and  joy, 
like  the  beggar  or  the  bear  or  the  tiger,  and  others 
kept  the  best,  like  swine,  or  skulked  like  curs, 
or  plodded  like  horses,  or  prattled  like  parrots. 
Animals  ran  about,  dumb  like  the  vegetables 
they  had  eaten.  Vegetables  were  heaped  in 
the  stalls,  mysterious  as  the  earth  which  they 
had  lately  been.  The  buildings  were  piled  up 
to  resemble  the  hills  from  whose  substance 
they  had  been  created,  and  their  pillars  were 
fashioned  like  trees.  Everywhere  were  the 
savage  angles  and  wild  lines  of  one  thing 
turning  into  another.  And  Peter  longed  to 
help  to  fashion  them  all,  as  he  fashioned  his 
little  balls  of  mould  and  loam. 

"There  is  so  much  yet  to  do,"  thought  little 


THE   KING'S  TRUMPETER  91 

Peter,  "I  wonder  that  they  take  so  much  time 
for  holidays." 

So  he  ran  quickly  to  a  high,  white  place  in 
the  midst  of  the  town,  where  they  were  making 
ready  to  erect  the  throne  of  the  king  of  the  car- 
nival, and  on  that  he  stood  and  cried  :  — 

"Hear  me  —  hear  me!  The  world  is  begin- 
ning. You  must  go  and  help  the  king." 

Now,  if  those  about  the  carnival  throne  had 
only  said  :  "What  is  that  to  us  ?  Go  away  !" 
Peter  would  have  been  warned.  But  they  only 
nodded,  and  they  said  kindly  :  "Yes,  so  it  is  — 
and  we  mean  to  help  presently.  Come  and  help 
us  first ! "  And  one  of  the  revellers,  seeing  Peter, 
how  little  he  was,  picked  him  up  and  held  him 
at  arm's  length  and  cried:  — 

"Lo,  now,  this  little  lad.  He  is  no  bigger 
than  a  trumpet  ..." 

(That  was  what  the  king  had  said,  and  it 
pleased  Peter  to  hear  it  said  again.) 

"...  Let  us  take  him,"  the  revellers  went  on, 
"and  have  him  for  a  trumpet.  And  take  him 
with  us  in  our  great  procession.  What  think 
ye?" 

"And  may  I  cry  out  what  message  I  please  ?" 
little  Peter  asked  eagerly. 


92  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

"Surely,"  answered  all  the  revellers,  gayly. 
"What  is  that  to  us,  so  that  you  come  with  us  ?" 

They  picked  him  up  and  tossed  him  on  their 
shoulders  —  for  he  was  of  about  a  brazen  trum- 
pet's weight,  no  more ;  —  and  Peter  clapped  his 
hands  for  joy,  for  he  was  a  boy  and  he  loved 
to  think  that  he  would  be  a  part  of  that  gorgeous 
procession.  And  they  took  him  away  to  the 
great  tent  on  the  city  green  where  everyone  was 
dressing  for  the  carnival. 

Peter  never  had  seen  anything  so  strange  and 
wonderful  as  what  was  within  that  tent.  In  it 
everything  and  everybody  had  just  been  or  was 
just  going  to  be  something  or  somebody  else. 
Not  only  had  the  gay  garments  piled  on  the  floor 
just  been  sheep's  and  silkworm's  coats,  not  only 
had  the  colours  laid  upon  them  just  been  roots 
and  stems  and  herb-leaves,  not  only  had  the 
staves  been  tree's  boughs  and  elephant's  tusks, 
but  the  very  coal  burning  in  the  braziers  and  the 
oil  in  the  torches  had  once  been  sunshine,  and 
the  very  flames  had  been  air,  and  before  that 
water,  and  so  on.  But,  most  of  all,  the  people 
showed  what  they  had  been,  for  in  any  merry- 
making the  kinds  of  animals  in  folk  cannot  be 
covered  up ;  and  it  was  a  regular  menagerie. 


THE   KING'S   TRUMPETER  93 

They  took  little  Peter  and  dressed  him  like 
a  trumpet.  They  thrust  both  his  legs  into  one 
long  cloth-of-gold  stocking,  and  he  held  his  arms 
tightly  at  his  sides  while  they  wound  his  little 
body  in  ruffles  of  gold-coloured  silk,  growing 
broader  and  broader  into  a  full-gathered  ruff 
from  which  his  laughing  face  peeped  out.  And 
he  was  so  slender  and  graceful  that  you  could 
hardly  have  told  him  from  a  real,  true,  golden 
trumpet. 

Then  the  procession  was  ready  to  start,  all 
lined  up  in  the  great  tent.  And  the  heralds 
and  the  music  all  burst  out  at  once  as  the  green 
curtain  of  the  tent  was  drawn  aside,  and  the  long> 
glittering  line  began  to  move.  Little  heralds, 
darting  about  for  all  the  world  like  squirrels 
and  chipmunks ;  a  great  elephant  of  a  master 
of  ceremonies,  bellowing  out  the  order  of  the 
day  as  if  he  had  been  presiding  over  the  jungle ; 
a  group  of  men  high  in  the  town's  confidence, 
whose  spots  proclaimed  them  once  to  have  been 
leopards,  and  other  things ;  long,  lithe  harle- 
quins descended  from  serpents  ;  little,  fat  clowns 
still  showing  the  magpie ;  prominent  citizens, 
unable  as  yet  to  conceal  the  fox  and  the  wolf  in 
their  faces ;  the  mayor  of  the  town,  revealing 


94  WHEN  I  WAS  A   LITTLE  GIRL 

the  chameleon  in  his  blood ;  little  donkey  men ; 
and  a  fine  old  gentleman  or  two  made  like  eagles 
—  all  of  them  getting  done  into  men  as  quickly 
as  possible.  In  the  midst  rode  the  king  of  the 
carnival,  who  had  evidently  not  long  since  been 
a  lion,  and  that  no  doubt  was  why  they  picked 
him  out.  He  rode  on  a  golden  car  from  which 
sprays  of  green  sprang  out  to  reach  from  side  to 
side  of  the  broad  street.  And  at  his  lips,  held 
like  a  trumpet,  he  carried  little  Peter,  one  hand 
on  Peter's  feet  set  to  the  kingly  lips,  and  the  other 
stretched  out  to  Peter's  breast. 

Then  Peter  lifted  up  his  shrill  little  voice  and 
shouted  loud  his  message  :  - 

"  The  world  is  beginning !  The  world  is  be- 
ginning! The  world  is  beginning!  You  must 
go  and  help  the  king.  You  must  go-o-o  and  help 
the  king!" 

But  just  as  he  cried  that,  the  carnival  band 
struck  into  a  merry  march,  and  all  the  heralds 
were  calling,  and  the  people  were  shouting,  and 
Peter's  little  voice  did  not  reach  very  far. 

"  Shout  again  ! "  bade  the  king  of  the  carnival, 
who  did  not  care  in  the  least  what  Peter  said, 
so  long  only  as  he  acted  like  a  trumpet. 

So  Peter  shouted  again  —  shouted  his  very 


THE   KING'S   TRUMPETER  95 

best.  He  shouted  as  loudly  as  he  did  at  play, 
as  loudly  as  when  he  swam  and  raced  in  the 
water,  as  loudly  as  any  boy  could  shout.  But 
it  seemed  to  him  that  his  voice  carried  hardly 
farther  than  the  little  chipmunk-and-squirrel 
heralds  before  him,  and  that  nobody  heard  him. 

Still,  it  was  all  such  fun  !  The  glitter  of  the 
procession,  the  eagerness  of  the  people,  the  lilt 
and  rhythm  of  the  music.  And  fun  over  all  was 
it  to  be  carried  by  the  carnival  king  himself,  high 
above  everyone  and  dressed  like  a  golden  trum- 
pet. Surely,  surely  no  boy  ever  had  more  fun 
than  that !  Surely,  surely  it  was  no  great  marvel 
that  after  a  little  time,  so  loud  was  the  clamour 
and  so  fast  the  excitement,  that  Peter  stopped 
crying  his  message,  and  merely  watched  and 
laughed  and  delighted  with  the  rest. 

Up  and  down  through  the  thronged  streets 
they  went,  that  great,  glittering  procession, 
winding  its  mile  or  more  of  spangles  and  gilding 
and  gay  dress  and  animals  richly  caparisoned. 
Everywhere  the  crowded  walks  and  windows  and 
balconies  sent  cheers  into  the  air,  everywhere 
flowers  were  thrown  and  messages  tossed  and 
melody  flooded.  And  wherever  that  long  line 
passed,  everyone  noted  the  king's  trumpet  and 


96  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE   GIRL 

pointed  it  out  and  clapped  hands  and  tried  to 
throw  upon  it  garlands.  And  there  was  so 
much  to  see,  and  so  much  excitement  there  was 
in  the  hour,  that  at  last  little  Peter  did  not  even 
think  of  his  message,  and  only  jested  and  made 
merry.  For  it  was  the  most  wonderful  game 
that  ever  he  had  played. 

"How  now,  my  little  trumpeter?"  the  king 
of  the  carnival  would  say  sometimes,  when  he 
rested  his  arms  and  held  Peter  at  his  side. 

"Oh,  welly  your  majesty  !"  Peter  would  cry, 
laughing  up  at  him. 

"This  is  all  a  fine  game  and  nothing  more," 
the  king  of  the  carnival  would  tell  him.  "Is 
this  not  so  ?" 

Then  he  would  toss  the  boy  on  high  again, 
away  above  the  golden  car,  and  Peter  would  cry 
out  with  the  delight  of  it.  And  though  there 
were  no  wings  and  no  great  brightness  in  the  air, 
yet  the  hour  was  golden  and  joy  was  abroad  like 
a  person. 

Presently,  a  band  of  mountebanks,  dressed 
like  ploughmen  and  harvesters,  came  tumbling 
and  racing  by  the  procession,  and  calling  to 
everyone  to  come  to  a  corn  husking  on  the  city 
green. 


THE    KING'S  TRUMPETER  97 

"Husks  !  Husks  !  A  corn  husking  on  the 
city  green.  Husks  —  husks  —  husks  !"  they 
cried. 

But  there  was  such  a  tumult  that  no  one  could 
well  hear  what  they  said,  and  presently  they 
appealed  to  the  carnival  king  to  tell  the  people. 

"Nay,  O  king,  they  hear  us  not  for  the  noise 
of  thy  passing,"  said  they.  "Prithee  tell  the 
people  what  we  would  say." 

"Tell  the  people,  my  little  trumpeter !"  cried 
the  king,  and  lifted  Peter  to  his  lips. 

And  Peter  shouted  out  with   all  his   might. 

"Husks  !  Husks  !  A  corn  husking  on  the 
city  green.  Husks  —  husks  —  husks  !" 

"Bravely  done  !"  called  the  mountebanks,  in 
delight,  and  ran  alongside  the  car,  leaping  and 
tumbling  and  grotesquely  showing  their  de- 
light. "Bravely  done!  Tell  the  people  —  bid 
the  people  come !" 

So  Peter  called  again,  and  yet  again,  at  the 
full  strength  of  his  little  voice.  And  it  seemed 
to  him  that  the  people  surely  listened,  and  it  was 
a  delight  and  a  flattery  to  be  the  one  voice  in 
the  great  procession,  save  only  the  music's 
voice. 

At  last,  for  one  moment  it  chanced  that  the 


98  WHEN   I  WAS  A   LITTLE  GIRL 

bands  ceased  altogether  their  playing,  so  that 
there  was  an  instant  of  almost  silence. 

"Husks,  husks,  husks!"  he  cried,  with  all  his 
might. 

And  as  he  did  that,  thin  and  clear  through  the 
silence,  vexed  somewhat  by  the  voices  of  the 
people,  —  now  barks,  now  whines,  now  bellows, 
now  words,  —  Peter  caught  a  little  wandering 
melody,  as  though  a  bird's  singing  were  turning 
into  words  :  — 

66  Open,  world,  your  trembling  petals  slowly, 
Here  one,  there  one,  natal  to  its  hour  .  .  ." 

and  in  the  midst  of  that  motley  throng,  Peter, 
looking  down,  saw  the  poet  whom  he  had  left 
on  the  hill-top,  now  wandering  alone  and  singing 
his  message  to  his  lute. 

"Oh,  the  king  !  Oh,  my  king  !  "  cried  little 
Peter,  as  if  he  had  had  a  great  wound. 

"What  now,  my  little  trumpeter  ?  "  asked  the 
carnival  king. 

"Not  you  —  not  you!"  cried  Peter.  "Oh, 
set  me  down,  —  set  me  down.  Oh,  what  have 
I  done?" 

"How  now,  little  Trumpet?"  cried  the  car- 
nival king.  But  Peter,  instead  of  stretching 


THE   KING'S  TRUMPETER  99 

out  his  little  body,  slim  and  trumpet-graceful, 
turned  and  fell  at  the  king's  feet  in  the  car 
and  slipped  from  his  grasp  and  scrambled 
through  the  branching  green  and  reached  the 
street. 

There,  in  the  wonder  and  then  the  mockery 
of  the  people,  he  began  struggling  to  free  him- 
self from  the  ruffles  of  cloth-of-gold  about  his 
body.  Some  laughed,  some  ran  from  him  as  if 
he  were  mad,  and  some,  wishing  for  themselves 
the  golden  ruffles,  helped  him  to  pull  them  off 
and  to  strip  down  the  clinging  golden  stocking 
that  bound  his  limbs.  And  then,  being  close 
to  the  city  gates,  little  Peter  ran,  all  naked  as  he 
was,  without  the  gates  and  on  to  the  empty  road. 
And  he  ran  sobbing  out  his  heart  :  — 

"Oh,  my  king  !  I  would  have  told  them  that 
the  world  is  beginning  —  but,  instead  I  have 
told  them  only  to  get  them  husks  !" 

Now  the  poet,  who  had  seen  it  all  —  and  who 
understood  —  ceased  his  song  and  made  his  way 
as  quickly  as  might  be  for  the  press  of  the  people, 
and  ran  after  Peter,  and  fared  along  the  road 
beside  him,  trying  to  comfort  him.  But  the 
little  lad  might  not  be  comforted,  and  he  only 
cried  out  again  :  — 


ioo  WHEN   I  WAS  A   LITTLE  GIRL 

"The  king  —  the  king  !  I  would  have  given 
them  his  message  —  and  I  bade  them  only  to 
get  them  husks  !" 

So  the  poet  —  who  understood  —  said  no  word 
at  all,  but  he  shielded  Peter  with  his  mantle; 
and  then  he  took  his  lute  and  walked  beside  the 
little  lad,  singing. 

They  had  gone  but  a  short  distance  when  they 
reached  the  top  of  a  hill,  where  the  sun  shone 
with  exceeding  brightness,  and  the  poet  noted 
that  the  light  fell  almost  like  little  wings.  Peter 
saw  none  of  this,  for  his  hands  were  still  covering 
his  face.  But  he  heard  the  poet's  singing  inter- 
rupted by  a  voice.  The  voice  was  uneven  — 
like  a  bark  or  a  whine  that  is  turning  into  words 
—  but  yet  its  words  were  clear  and  unmistak- 
able. And  they  were  :  — 

"Sirs,  the  world  is  beginning.  You  must  go 
and  help  the  king." 

Peter  looked  up  and  he  saw  the  man  who  had 
spoken,  a  man  twisted  and  ragged,  but  who 
smiled  down  into  the  little  boy's  face  so  gently 
that,  for  a  moment,  Peter  did  not  know  him ; 
and  then  he  recognized  that  beggar  to  whom,  on 
that  night  long  ago,  he  had  given  food  and  the 
message. 


THE   KING'S   TRUMPETER  101 

"Ay,  friend!"  the  poet  was  answering  him 
ringingly,  "  and  we  go  !" 

The  beggar  hurried  on,  and  the  poet  touched 
Peter's  hand. 

"Nay,  now,  little  Peter,"  he  said,  "grieve  not 
your  heart  too  much.  For  you  it  was  who  told 
the  beggar  the  message  —  from  the  top  of  the 
hill  I  heard  —  and  I  saw  you  give  him  food. 
Can  you  tell  any  man  without  some  good  coming 
true  of  the  tidings  ?  Then  it  may  well  be  that 
there  are  those  in  the  town  to  whom  you  told 
the  king's  message  who  will  remember,  too.  Go 
we  forth  together  to  try  again  !" 

Peter  looked  down  the  long  highway,  stretch- 
ing between  the  mysterious  green,  where  shrubs 
changed  to  animals  in  so  little  a  space ;  and  then 
he  looked  away  to  the  king's  kingdom  and  saw 
how  it  was  not  finished  —  because  the  world  had 
just  stopped  being  nothing  and  was  beginning 
to  be  something  —  and  he  looked  back  towards 
the  city  where,  as  at  the  court,  men  had  not  yet 
done  being  animals.  Everything  was  changing, 
as  if  nothing  were  meant  to  be  merely  what  it  is. 
And  everything  was  in  savage  angles  and  wild 
lines.  The  world  was  beginning.  The  people 
must  be  told  to  go  and  help  the  king. 


102  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

"Go  we  forth  together  to  try  again,"  the  poet 
repeated. 

He  touched  his  lute,  and  its  melody  slipped 
into  the  sunshine. 

"  Toward  the  time  when,  holden  in  a  vessel  holy, 
You  shall  be  a  flower" 

Then  Peter  stretched  out  his  arms,  and  his 
whole  slender  little  body  became  like  one  trum- 
pet voice,  and  that  voice  strong  and  clear  to 
reach  round  the  world  itself. 

"I  try  once  again  !"  he  answered.  "The 
world  is  beginning.  /  must  go  and  help  the 
king." 


VI 

MY  LADY  OF  THE  APPLE  TREE 

OUR  lawn  was  nine  apple  trees  large.  There 
were  none  in  front,  where  only  Evergreens  grew, 
and  two  silver  Lombardy  poplars,  heaven-tall. 
The  apple  trees  began  with  the  Cooking-apple 
tree  by  the  side  porch.  This  was,  of  course, 
no  true  tree  except  in  apple-blossom  time,  and 
at  other  times  hardly  counted.  The  length 
of  twenty  jumping  ropes  —  they  call  them  skip- 
ping ropes  now,  but  we  never  called  them  so  — 
laid  one  after  another  along  the  path  would  have 
brought  one  to  the  second  tree,  the  Eating- 
apple  tree,  whose  fruit  was  red  without  and  pink- 
white  within.  To  this  day  I  do  not  know  what 
kind  of  apples  those  were,  whether  Duchess, 
Gilliflower,  Russet,  Sweet,  or  Snow.  But  after 
all,  these  only  name  the  body  of  the  apple,  as 
Jasper  or  Edith  names  the  body  of  you.  The 
soul  of  you,  like  the  real  sense  of  Apple,  lives 
nameless  all  its  days.  Sometime  we  must  play 

103 


104          WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

the  game  of  giving  us  a  secret  name  —  the  Path- 
finder, the  Lamplighter,  the  Starseeker,  and  so 
on.  But  colours  and  flavours  are  harder  to 
name  and  must  wait  longer. than  we. 

.  .  .  Under  this  Nameless  tree,  then,  the 
swing  hung,  and  to  sit  in  the  swing  and  have  one's 
head  touch  apple-blossoms,  and  mind,  not  touch 
them  with  one's  foot,  was  precisely  like  having 
one's  swing  knotted  to  the  sky,  so  that  one 
might  rise  in  rhythm,  head  and  toe,  up  among 
the  living  stars.  I  can  think  of  no  difference 
worth  the  mentioning,  so  high  it  seemed.  And 
if  one  does  not  know  what  rhythm  is,  one  has 
only  to  say  it  over :  Spring,  Summer,  apple- 
blossom,  apple ;  new  moon,  old  moon,  running 
river,  echo  —  and  then  one  will  know. 

"I  would  pick  some,"  said  Mother,  looking 
up  at  the  apple-blossoms,  "if  I  only  knew  which 
ones  will  never  be  apples." 

So  some  of  the  blossoms  would  never  be 
apples  !  Which  ones  ?  And  why? 

"Why  will  some  be  apples  and  some  others 
never  be  apples  ?"  I  inquired. 

But  Mother  was  singing  and  swinging  me, 
and  she  did  not  tell. 

"Why  will   you   be   apples  and   you  not  be 


MY  LADY  OF  THE  APPLE   TREE         105 

apples,  and  me  not  know  which,  and  you  not 
know  which  ?"  I  said  to  the  apple-blossoms 
when  next  my  head  touched  them.  Of  course, 
you  never  really  speak  to  things  with  your 
throat  voice,  but  you  think  it  at  them  with 
your  head  voice.  Perhaps  that  is  the  way  they 
answer,  and  that  is  why  one  does  not  always 
hear  what  they  say.  .  .  . 

The  apple-blossoms  did  not  say  anything 
that  I  could  hear.  The  stillness  of  things  never 
ceased  to  surprise  me.  It  would  have  been 
far  less  wonderful  to  me  if  the  apple-blossoms 
and  the  Lombardy  poplars  and  my  new  shoes 
had  answered  me  sometimes  than  that  they 
always  kept  their  unfriendly  silence.  One's 
new  shoes  look  so  friendly,  with  their  winking 
button  eyes  and  their  placid  noses  !  And  yet 
they  act  as  cross  about  answering  as  do  some 
little  boys  who  move  into  the  neighbourhood. 

.  .  .  Indeed,  if  one  comes  to  think  of  it,  one's 
shoes  are  rather  like  the  sturdy  little  boys  among 
one's  clothes.  One's  slippers  are  more  like 
little  girls,  all  straps  and  bows  and  tiptoes. 
Then  one's  aprons  must  be  the  babies,  long 
and  white  and  dainty.  And  one's  frocks  and 
suits  —  that  is  to  say,  one's  new  frocks  and 


io6          WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

suits  —  are  the  ladies  and  gentlemen,  important 
and  elegant;  and  one's  everyday  things  are 
the  men  and  women,  neither  important  nor  ele- 
gant, but  best  of  all ;  and  one's  oldest  garments 
are  the  witches,  shapeless  and  sad  and  haunted. 
This  leaves  ribbons  and  sashes  and  beads  to 
be  fairies  —  both  good  and  bad. 

The  silence  of  the  Nameless  tree  was  to  lift 
a  little  that  very  day.  When  Mother  had  gone 
in  the  house,  —  something  seemed  always  to  be 
pulling  at  Mother  to  be  back  in  the  house  as, 
in  the  house,  something  always  pulled  at  me  to 
be  back  out-of-doors,  —  I  remember  that  I  was 
twisting  the  rope  and  then  lying  back  over  the 
board,  head  down,  for  the  untwisting.  And 
while  my  head  was  whirling  and  my  feet  were 
guiding,  I  looked  up  at  the  tree  and  saw  it  as 
I  had  never  seen  it  before :  soft  falling  skirts 
of  white  with  lacy  edges  and  flowery  patterns, 
drooping  and  billowing  all  about  a  pedestal, 
which  was  the  tree  trunk,  and  up-tapering  at 
the  top  like  a  waist  —  why,  the  tree  was  a 
lady !  Leaning  in  the  air  there  above  the 
branches,  surely  I  could  see  her  beautiful 
shoulders  and  her  white  arms,  her  calm  face 
and  her  bright  hair  against  the  blue.  She  had 


MY  LADY  OF  THE  APPLE  TREE         107 

risen  out  of  the  trunk  at  the  tree's  blossoming 
and  was  waiting  for  someone  to  greet  her. 

I  struggled  out  of  the  swing  and  scrambled, 
breathless,  back  from  the  tree  and  looked  where 
she  should  be.  Already  I  knew  her.  Nearly, 
I  knew  the  things  that  she  would  say  to  me  — 
sometimes  now  I  know  the  things  that  she  would 
have  said  if  we  had  not  been  interrupted. 

The  interruption  came  from  four  girls  who 
lived,  as  I  thought,  outside  my  world,  —  for 
those  were  the  little  days  when  I  did  not  yet 
know  that  this  cannot  be.  They  were  the 
Eversley  sisters,  in  full-skirted,  figured  calico, 
and  they  all  had  large,  chapped  hands  and  wide 
teeth  and  stout  shoes.  For  a  year  they  had 
been  wont  to  pass  our  house  on  the  way  to  the 
public  school,  but  they  had  spoken  to  me  no 
more  than  if  I  had  been  invisible  —  until  the 
day  when  I  had  first  entered  school.  After 
that,  it  was  as  if  I  had  been  born  into  their  air, 
or  thrown  in  the  same  cage,  or  had  somehow 
become  one  of  them.  And  I  was  in  terror  of 
them. 

"Come  'ere  once  !"  they  commanded,  their 
voices  falling  like  sharp  pebbles  about  the  Apple- 
blossom  lady  and  me. 


io8  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

Obediently  I  ran  to  the  front  fence,  though 
my  throat  felt  sick  when  I  saw  them  coming. 
"Have  an  apple  core  ?  Give  us  some  of  them 
flowers.  Shut  your  eyes  so's  you'll  look  just 
like  you  was  dead."  These  were  the  things 
that  they  always  said.  Something  kept  telling 
me  that  I  ought  not  to  tell  them  about  my  lady, 
but  I  was  always  wanting  to  win  their  approval 
and  to  let  them  know  that  I  was  really  more 
one  of  them  than  they  thought.  So  I  disobeyed, 
and  I  told  them.  Mysteriously,  breathlessly 
I  led  them  back  to  the  tree ;  and  feeling  all  the 
time  that  I  was  not  keeping  faith,  I  pointed  her 
out  to  them.  I  showed  them  just  where  to  look, 
beginning  with  the  skirts,  which  surely  anybody 
could  see.  ...  I  used  often  to  dream  that  a 
crowd  of  apish,  impish  little  folk  was  making 
fun  of  me,  and  that  afternoon  I  lived  it,  standing 
out  alone  against  those  four  who  fell  to  instant 
jeering.  If  they  had  stooped  and  put  their 
hands  on  their  knees  and  hopped  about  making 
faces,  it  would  have  been  no  more  horrible  to 
me  than  their  laughter.  It  held  for  me  all  the 
sense  of  bad  dreams,  and  then  of  waking  alone, 
in  the  middle  of  the  night.  The  worst  was  that 
I  could  find  no  words  to  make  them  know.  I 


MY  LADY  OF  THE  APPLE   TREE         109 

could  only  keep  saying,  "She  is  there,  she  is 
there,  she  is  there."  By  some  means  I  man- 
aged not  to  cry,  not  even  when  they  each  broke 
a  great  branch  of  blossoms  from  the  Eating- 
apple  tree  and  ran  away,  flat-footed,  down  the 
path ;  not  indeed  until  the  gate  had  slammed 
and  I  turned  back  to  the  tree  and  saw  that  my 
lady  had  gone. 

There  was  no  doubt  about  it.  Here  were 
no  longer  soft  skirts,  but  only  flowery  branches 
where  the  sunlight  thickened  and  the  bees 
drowsed.  My  lady  was  gone.  Try  as  I  might, 
I  could  not  bring  her  back.  So  she  had  been 
mocking  me  too  !  Otherwise,  why  had  she  let 
me  see  her  so  that  I  should  be  laughed  at,  and 
then  herself  vanished  ?  Yet,  even  then,  I  re- 
member that  I  did  not  doubt  her,  or  for  a  mo- 
ment cease  to  believe  that  she  was  really  there ; 
only  I  felt  a  kind  of  shame  that  I  could  see  her, 
and  that  the  others  could  not  see  her.  I  had 
felt  the  same  kind  of  shame  before,  never  when 
I  was  alone,  but  always  when  I  was  with  people. 
We  played  together  well  enough,  —  Pom,  pom, 
pullaway,  Minny-minny  motion,  Crack-the- 
whip,  London  Bridge,  and  the  rest,  save  that  I 
could  not  run  as  fast  as  nearly  everybody.  But 


no          WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

the  minute  we  stopped  playing  and  talked,  then 
I  was  always  saying  something  so  that  the  same 
kind  of  shame  came  over  me. 

I  saw  Delia  crossing  the  street.  In  one  hand 
she  held  two  cookies  which  she  was  biting  down 
sandwich-wise,  and  in  the  other  hand  two  cook- 
ies, as  yet  unbitten.  The  latter  she  shook  at 
me. 

"I  knew  I'd  see  you,"  she  called  resentfully. 
"I  says  I'd  give  'em  to  you  if  I  saw  you,  and  if 
I  didn't  see  you  — " 

She  left  it  unfinished  at  a  point  which  gave 
no  doubt  as  to  whose  cookies  they  might  have 
been  had  I  not  been  offensively  about.  But  the 
cookies  were  fresh,  and  I  felt  no  false  delicacy. 
However,  after  deliberation,  I  ate  my  own,  one 
at  a  time,  rejecting  the  sandwich  method; 

"It  lasts  them  longest,"  I  explained. 

"The  other  way  they  bite  thicker,"  Delia 
contended. 

"Your  teeth  don't  taste,"  I  objected  scien- 
tifically. 

Delia  opened  her  eyes.  "Why,  they  do  too  !" 
she  cried. 

I  considered.  I  had  always  had  great  respect 
for  the  strange  chorus  of  my  teeth,  and  I  was 


MY  LADY  OF  THE  APPLE  TREE    in 

perfectly  ready  to  regard  them  as  having  in- 
dependent powers. 

"Oh,  not  when  you  eat  tipsy-toes  like  that," 
said  Delia,  scornfully.  "Lemme  show  you.  .  .  ." 
She  leaned  for  my  cooky,  her  own  being  gone. 
I  ran  shamelessly  down  the  path  toward  the 
swing,  and  by  the  time  the  swing  was  reached 
I  had  frankly  abandoned  serial  bites. 

I  sat  on  the  grass,  giving  Delia  the  swing  as 
a  peace-offering.  She  took  it,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  and  did  not  scruple  to  press  her  advan- 
tage. 

"Don't  you  want  to  swing  me  ?"  she  said. 

I  particularly  disliked  being  asked  in  that 
way  to  do  things.  Grown-ups  were  always 
doing  it,  and  what  could  be  more  absurd  :  "Don't 
you  want  to  pick  up  your  things  now  ?  "  "  Don't 
you  want  to  let  auntie  have  that  chair?" 
"Don't  you  want  to  take  this  over  to  Mrs. 
Rodman?"  The  form  of  the  query  always 
struck  me  as  quite  shameless.  I  truthfully 
shook  my  head. 

"I'm  company,"  Delia  intimated. 

"When  you're  over  to  my  house,  I  have  to 
let  you  swing  because  you're  company,"  I  said 
speculatively,  "and  when  I'm  over  to  your 


ii2  WHEN   I  WAS   A   LITTLE  GIRL 

house,  I  have  to  let  you  swing  because  it's  your 
swing." 

"I  don't  care  about  being  company,"  said 
Delia,  loftily,  and  started  home. 

"I'll  swing  you.  I  was  only  fooling!"  I 
said,  scrambling  up. 

It  worked  —  as  Delia  knew  it  would  and 
always  did  work.  All  the  same,  as  I  pushed 
Delia,  with  my  eyes  on  the  blue-check  gingham 
strap  buttoned  across  the  back  of  her  apron,  I 
reflected  on  the  truth  and  its  parallels  :  How, 
when  Delia  came  to  see  me,  I  had  to  "pick  up" 
the  playthings  and  set  in  order  store  or  ship  or 
den  or  cave  or  county  fair  or  whatnot  because 
Delia  had  to  go  home  early ;  and  when  I  was 
over  to  Delia's,  I  had  to  help  put  things  away  be- 
cause they  were  hers  and  she  had  got  them  out. 

Low-swing,  high-swing,  now-I'm-going-to- 
run-under-swing  —  I  gave  them  all  to  Delia  and 
sank  on  the  grass  to  watch  the  old  cat  die.  As  it 
died,  Delia  suddenly  twisted  the  rope  and  then 
dropped  back  and  lay  across  the  board  and 
loosed  her  hands.  I  never  dared  "let  go,"  as 
we  said,  but  Delia  did  and  lay  whirling,  her 
hair  falling  out  like  a  sun's  rays,  and  her  eyes 
shut. 


MY   LADY   OF  THE  APPLE   TREE         113 

I  watched  her,  fascinated.  If  she  opened  her 
eyes,  I  knew  how  the  picket  fence  would  swim  for 
her,  no  longer  a  line  but  a  circle.  Then  I  re- 
membered what  I  had  seen  in  the  tree  when  I 
was  twisting,  and  I  looked  back.  .  .  . 

There  she  was  !  Quite  as  I  had  fleetingly  seen 
her,  with  lacy  skirts  and  vague,  sweeping  sleeves 
and  bending  line  of  shoulder,  my  Lady  of  the 
Tree  was  there  again.  I  looked  at  her  breath- 
lessly, unsurprised  at  the  gracious  movement  of 
her,  so  skilfully  concealed  by  the  disguises  of 
the  wind.  Oh,  was  she  there  all  the  time,  or 
only  in  apple-blossom  time  ?  Would  she  be 
there  not  only  in  white  Spring  but  in  green  Sum- 
mer and  yellow  Fall  — \  why,  perhaps  all  those 
times  came  only  because  she  changed  her  gown. 
Perhaps  night  came  only  because  she  put  on 
something  dusky,  made  of  veils.  Maybe 
the  stars  that  I  had  thought  looked  to  be 
caught  in  the  branches  were  the  jewels  in  her 
hair.  And  the  wind  might  be  her  voice  !  I 
listened  with  all  my  might.  What  if  she  should 
tell  me  her  name  .  .  .  and  know  my  name  !  .  .  . 

"Seventeen  un-twists,"  announced  Delia. 
"Did  you  ever  get  that  many  out  of  such  a  little 
stingy  swing  as  you  gave  me  ?" 


!I4          WHEN     I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

I  did  not  question  the  desirability  of  telling 
Delia.  The  four  Eversley  girls  had  been  bar- 
barians (so  I  thought).  Delia  I  had  known 
always.  To  be  sure,  she  had  sometimes  failed 
me,  but  these  times  were  not  real.  My  eyes 
were  on  the  tree,  and  Delia  came  curiously 
toward  me. 

"Bird?"  she  whispered. 

I  shook  my  head  and  beckoned  her.  Still 
looking  at  my  lady,  I  drew  Delia  down  beside 
me,  brought  her  head  close  to  mine. 

"Look,"  I  said,  "her  skirt  is  all  branches  — 
and  her  face  is  turned  the  other  way.  See  her  ? " 

Delia  looked  faithfully.  She  scanned  the 
tree  long  and  impartially. 

"See  her?  See  her?"  I  insisted,  under  the 
impression  that  I  was  defining  her.  "It's  a 
lady,"  I  breathed  it  finally. 

"Oh,"  said  Delia,  "you  mean  that  side  of  the 
tree  is  the  shape  of  one.  Yes,  it  is  —  kind  of. 
I'm  going  home.  We  got  chocolate  layer  cake 
for  supper.  Good-bye.  Last  tag." 

I  turned  to  Delia  for_a  second.  When  she 
went,  I  looked  back  for  my  lady  —  but  she  had 
gone.  Only  —  now  I  did  not  try  to  bring  her 
back.  Neither  did  I  doubt  her,  even  then. 


MY  LADY  OF  THE  APPLE  TREE         115 

But  there  came  back  a  certain  loneliness  that 
I  had  felt  before,  only  never  so  much  as  now. 
Why  was  it  that  the  others  could  not  see  ? 

I  lay  face  downward  in  the  grass  under  the 
tree.  There  were  other  things  like  this  lady 
that  I  had  been  conscious  of,  which  nobody  else 
seemed  to  care  about.  Sometimes  I  had  tried 
to  tell.  More  often  I  had  instinctively  kept 
still.  Now  slowly  I  thought  that  I  understood  : 
I  was  different.  Different  from  the  whole 
world.  Did  I  not  remember  how,  when  I  walked 
on  the  street,  groups  of  children  would  sometimes 
whisper:  "There  she  is  —  there  she  is!"  Or, 
"Here  she  comes  I"  I  had  thought,  poor  child, 
that  this  would  be  because  my  hair  was  long, 
like  little  Eva's  in  the  only  play  that  most  of  us 
had  seen.  But  now  I  thought  I  knew  what  they 
had  known  and  I  had  not  known :  That  I  was 
different. 

I  dropped  my  face  in  the  crook  of  my  arm  and 
cried  —  silently,  because  to  cry  aloud  seemed 
always  to  have  about  it  a  kind  of  nakedness ; 
but  I  cried  sorely,  pantingly,  with  aching  throat, 
and  tried  to  think  it  out. 

What  was  this  difference  ?  I  had  heard  them 
say  in  the  house  that  my  head  was  large,  my 


Ii6  WHEN   I  WAS   A  LITTLE   GIRL 

hair  too  long  to  let  me  be  healthy ;  and  the  four 
Eversleys  always  wanted  me  to  shut  my  eyes 
so  that  I  should  look  dead.  But  it  was  some- 
thing other  than  these.  Maybe  —  I  shall  never 
forget  the  grip  of  that  fear  —  maybe  I  was  not 
human.  Maybe  I  was  Adopted.  I  had  no 
clear  idea  what  Adopted  meant,  but  my  impres- 
sion was  that  it  meant  not  to  have  been  born  at 
all.  That  was  it.  I  was  like  the  apple-blos- 
soms that  would  never  be  apples.  I  was  just  a 
Pretend  little  girl,  a  kind  of  secret  one,  somebody 
who  could  never,  never  be  the  same  as  the  rest. 

I  turned  from  that  deep  afternoon  and  ran  for 
the  wood-pile  where  I  had  a  hiding-place.  Down 
the  path  I  met  Mother  and  clung  to  her. 

"Mother,  Mother!"  I  sobbed.  "Am  I 
adopted?" 

"No,  dear,"  she  said  seriously.  "You  are 
mine.  What  is  it  ?" 

"Promise  me  I'm  not !"  I  begged. 

"I  promise,"  she  said.  "Who  has  been  talk- 
ing to  you  ?  You  little  lamb,  come  in  the  house," 
she  added.  "You're  tired  out,  playing." 

I  went  with  her.  But  the  moment  had  en- 
tered me.  I  was  not  like  the  rest.  I  said  it 
over,  and  every  time  it  hurt.  There  is  no 


MY  LADY  OF  THE  APPLE  TREE         117 

more  passionate  believer  in  democracy  than  a 
child. 

Across  the  street  Delia  was  sitting  on  the  gate- 
post, ostentatiously  eating  chocolate  layer  cake, 
and  with  her  free  hand  twisting  into  a  curl  the 
end  of  her  short  braid.  Between  us  there 
seemed  to  have  revealed  itself  a  gulf,  life-wide. 
Had  Delia  always  known  about  me  ?  Did  the 
Rodman  girls  know  ?  And  Calista  ?  The  four 
Eversleys  must  know  —  this  was  why  they 
laughed  so.  ...  But  I  remember  how,  most 
of  all,  I  hoped  that  Mary  Elizabeth  did  not 
know  —  yet. 

From  that  day  I  faced  the  truth  :  I  was  differ- 
ent. I  was  somehow  not  really-truly.  And 
it  seemed  to  me  that  nothing  could  ever  be  done 
about  it. 


VII 

THE    PRINCESS    ROMANCIA 

THAT  night  I  could  not  go  to  sleep  with  the 
knowledge.  If  only  I,  as  I  am  now,  might 
have  sat  on  the  edge  of  the  bed  and  told  a 
story  to  me  as  I  was  then  !  I  am  always  wish- 
ing that  we  two  might  have  known  each  other 
—  I  as  I  am  now  and  I  as  I  was  then.  We 
should  have  been  so  much  more  interested  in 
each  other  than  anybody  else  could  ever  be. 
I  can  picture  us  looking  curiously  at  each  other 
through  the  dark,  and  each  would  have  wished 
to  be  the  other  —  how  hard  we  would  have 
wished  that.  But  neither  of  us  would  have 
got  it,  as  sometimes  happens  with  wishes. 

Looking  back  on  that  night,  and  knowing  how 
much  I  wanted  to  be  like  the  rest,  I  think  this 
would  be  the  story  that  I,  as  I  am  now,  would 
have  told  that  Little  Me. 

Once  upon  a  time  to  the  fairy  king  and  queen 

118 


THE   PRINCESS   ROMANCIA  119 

there  was  born  a  little  daughter.  And  the  king, 
being  a  modern  fairy,  determined  to  invite  to 
the  christening  of  his  daughter  twelve  mortals 

—  a  thing  never  before  countenanced  in  fairy 
ceremony.     And  of  course  all  unreal  people  are 
always  very  particular  about  their  ceremonies 
being  just  so. 

It  was  a  delicate  and  difficult  task  to  make  out 
that  mortal  invitation  list,  for  it  was  very  hard 
to  find  in  the  world  twelve  human  beings  who, 
at  a  fairy  party,  would  exactly  fit  in.  After 
long  thought  and  consultation  with  all  his  min- 
isters and  councillors,  the  king  made  put  the 
following  list :  — 

A  child ;  a  poet ;  a  scientist ;  a  carpenter ; 
a  prophet ;  an  artist ;  an  artisan ;  a  gar- 
dener ;  a  philosopher ;  a  woman  who  was  also  a 
mother ;  a  man  who  was  also  a  father ;  and  a 
day  labourer. 

"Do  you  think  that  will  do  at  all?"  the  fairy 
king  asked  the  fairy  queen,  tossing  over  the  list. 

'"Well,  dear,"  she  replied,  "it's  probably  the 
best  you  can  do.  You  know  what  people  are." 
She  hesitated  a  mere  breath  —  a  fairy's  breath 

—  and  added :    "  I  do  wonder  a  little,  though, 
just  why  the  day  labourer." 


120  WHEN   I  WAS  A   LITTLE   GIRL 

"My  dear,"  said  the  king,  "some  day  you  will 
understand  that,  and  many  other  things  as 
well." 

The  christening  room  was  a  Vasty  Hall,  whose 
deep  blue  ceiling  was  as  high  as  the  sky  and  as 
strange  as  night.  Lamps,  dim  as  the  stars, 
hung  very  high,  and  there  was  one  silver  central 
chandelier,  globed  like  the  moon,  and  there  were 
frescoes  like  clouds.  The  furnishings  of  the 
Vasty  Hall  were  most  magnificent.  There  were 
pillars  like  trees  spreading  out  into  capitals  of 
intricate  and  leafy  design.  Lengths  of  fair 
carpet  ran  here  and  there,  as  soft  arfd  shining  as 
little  streams ;  there  were  thick  rugs  as  deep  as 
moss,  seats  of  native  carved  stone,  and  tapes- 
tries as  splendid  as  vistas  curtaining  the  dis- 
tance. And  the  music  was  like  the  music  of 
All-night,  all  done  at  once. 

To  honour  the  occasion  the  fairy  guests  had 
all  come  dressed  as  something  else  —  for  by  now, 
of  course,  the  fairies  are  copying  many  human 
fashions.  One  was  disguised  as  a  Butterfly 
with  her  own  wings  prettily  painted.  One  rep- 
resented a  Rose,  and  she  could  hardly  be  dis- 
tinguished from  an  American  Beauty.  One  was 
made  up  as  a  Light,  whom  nobody  could  rec- 


THE   PRINCESS  ROMANCIA  121 

ognize.  One  was  a  White  Moth  and  one  was 
a  Thistle-down,  and  there  were  several  fantastic 
toilettes,  such  as  a  great  Tulle  Bow,  a  Paper 
Doll,  and  an  Hour-glass.  As  for  the  Human 
Beings  present,  they  all  came  masked  as  them- 
selves, as  usual ;  and  their  names  I  cannot  give 
you,  though  sometimes  I  see  someone  with 
dreaming  eyes  whom  I  think  may  possibly  have 
been  one  of  those  twelve  —  for  of  course  it  must 
have  made  a  difference  in  their  looks  ever  after- 
ward. It  was  a  very  brilliant  assemblage  in- 
deed, and  everyone  was  most  intangible  and 
elusive,  which  are  fairy  terms  for  well-behaved. 

While  the  guests  were  waiting  for  the  fairy 
baby  princess  to  be  brought  in,  they  idled  about, 
with  that  delightful  going-to-be-ice-cream  feel- 
ing which  you  have  at  any  party  in  some  form 
or  another,  only  you  must  never  say  so,  and  they 
exchanged  the  usual  pleasant  nothing-at-alls. 
It  is  curious  how  very  like  human  nothings 
fairy  nothings  are. 

For  example :  — 

"There  is  a  great  deal  of  night  about,"  said 
the  Butterfly  Fairy  with  a  little  shiver.  "If 
I  were  a  truly  butterfly,  I  should  never  be  able 
to  find  my  way  home." 


122          WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

"And  there  is  such  a  fad  for  thunder-and- 
lightning  this  season,"  added  the  Paper  Doll 
Fairy,  agreeably. 

"Do  you  remember,"  asked  the  White  Moth 
Fairy,  "the  night  that  we  all  dressed  as  white 
moths  and  went  to  meet  the  moon  ?  We  flew 
until  we  were  all  in  the  moonlight,  and  then  we 
knew  that  we  had  met  her.  I  wonder  why  more 
people  do  not  meet  the  moon-rise  ?" 

"That  reminds  me,"  said  the  Thistle-down 
Fairy,  "of  the  day  we  all  made  up  as  snowflakes 
and  went  to  find  the  Spring.  Don't  you  know 
how  she  surprised  us,  in  the  hollow  of  the  low- 
land ?  And  what  a  good  talk  we  had  ?  I 
wonder  why  more  people  do  not  go  to  meet  the 
Spring?" 

"A  charming  idea  !"  cried  the  Rose  Fairy 
to  the  Light  Fairy,  and  the  Light  Fairy  shone 
softly  upon  her,  precisely  like  an  answer. 

Then  somebody  observed  that  the  wind  that 
night  was  a  pure  soprano,  and  the  guests  amused 
themselves  comparing  wind-notes  ;  how  on  some 
nights  the  wind  is  deep  bass,  like  a  man's  voice, 
raging  through  the  world ;  and  sometimes  it  is 
tenor,  sweet,  and  singing  only  serenades  ;  and 
sometimes  it  is  all  contralto  and  like  a  lullaby; 


THE   PRINCESS  ROMANCIA  123 

and  sometimes,  but  not  often,  it  is  like  harp 
music  played  on  the  trees. 

Suddenly  the  whole  dark  lifted,  like  a  gar- 
ment ;  and  moonlight  flooded  the  Vasty  Hall. 
And  as  if  they  had  filtered  down  the  air  with  the 
light,  the  fairy  christening  party  entered  —  not 
as  we  enter  a  room,  by  thresholds  and  steps, 
but  the  way  that  a  thought  comes  in  your  head 
and  you  don't  know  how  it  got  there. 

The  christening  party  wore  robes  of  colours 
that  lie  deep  between  the  colours  and  may  hardly 
be  named.  And,  in  a  secret  ceremony,  such  as 
attends  the  blooming  of  flowers,  the  fairy  baby 
was  christened  Romancia.  Then  the  fairies 
brought  her  many  offerings ;  and  these  having 
been  received  and  admired,  a  great  hush  fell  on 
the  whole  assembly,  for  now  the  twelve  Human 
Beings  came  forward  with  their  gifts.  And 
everyone,  except,  indeed,  the  princess  herself, 
was  wild  with  curiosity  to  see  what  they  had 
brought. 

No  one. left  a  card  with  any  gift,  but  when 
the  fairy  king  came  to  look  them  over  afterward, 
he  felt  certain  who  had  brought  each  one.  The 
gifts  were  these  :  A  little  embroidered  gown 
which  should  make  everyone  love  the  princess 


124          WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

while  she  wore  it ;  a  gazing  crystal  which  would 
enable  the  princess  to  see  one  hundred  times  as 
much  as  anybody  else  saw;  certain  sea  secrets 
and  sea  spells  ;  a  lyre  which  played  itself ;  a  flask 
containing  a  draught  which  should  keep  the 
princess  young ;  a  vial  of  colours  which  hardly 
anyone  ever  sees  ;  flowers  and  grasses  and  leaves 
which  could  be  used  almost  like  a  dictionary  to 
spell  out  other  things  ;  an  assortment  of  wonderful 
happy  fancies  of  every  variety ;  a  new  rainbow ; 
a  box  of  picture  cards  of  the  world,  every  one  of 
which  should  come  true  if  one  only  went  far 
enough  ;  and  a  tapestry  of  the  universe,  wrapped 
around  a  brand-new  idea  in  a  box. 

When  these  things  had  been  graciously  ac- 
cepted by  the  king,  there  was  a  stir  in  the  com- 
pany, and  sweeping  into  its  midst  came  another 
Human  Being,  one  who  thought  that  she  had 
every  right  to  be  invited  to  the  christening,  but 
who  had  not  been  invited.  All  the  fairies 
shrank  back,  for  it  was  an  extraordinary-looking 
Human  Being.  She  was  tall  and  lithe  and 
wore  a  sparkling  gown,  and  her  face  had  the 
look  of  many  cities,  and  now  it  was  like  the 
painted  cover  of  an  empty  box,  and  all  the  time 
it  had  the  meaning  only  of  those  who  never  look 


THE  PRINCESS   ROMANCIA  125 

at  the  stars,  or  walk  in  gardens,  or  think  about 
others  rather  than  themselves,  or  listen  to  hear 
what  it  is  right  for  them  to  do.  This  kind  of 
Human  Being  is  one  who  not  often  has  any  good 
gift  to  give  to  anyone,  and  this  the  fairies  knew. 

The  Vasty  Hall  became  very  quiet  to  see  what 
she  had  brought,  for  no  one  understood  what 
she  could  possibly  have  to  bestow  upon  a  baby. 
And  without  asking  leave  of  the  king  or  the 
queen,  she  bent  over  the  child  and  clasped  on 
her  wrist  the  tiniest  bracelet  that  was  ever  made 
in  the  world,  and  she  snapped  its  lock  as  fast 
as  the  lock  on  a  fetter,  and  held  up  the  tiniest 
key  that  ever  was  wrought. 

"The  princess,"  she  cried,  "shall  seem  differ- 
entfrom  everyone  else.  She  shall  seem  like  nobody 
who  is  or  ever  has  been.  As  long  as  she  wears 
her  bracelet,  this  shall  be  true ;  and  that  she  may 
never  lose  it,  I  shall  hold  her  bracelet's  key. 
Hail  to  this  little  princess  child,  who  shall  seem 
like  nobody  in  the  world  !" 

Now,  no  one  present  was  quite  certain  what 
this  might  mean,  but  the  lady's  robe  was  so 
beautifully  embroidered  and  sparkling,  and  her 
voice  was  such  a  thing  of  loops  and  curves,  that 
nearly  everyone  accepted  the  gift  as  something 


126          WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE   GIRL 

fine  after  all,  and  the  queen  gave  her  her  hand 
to  kiss.  But  the  king,  who  was  a  very  wise 
fairy,  said  nothing  at  all,  and  merely  bowed  and 
eyed  the  bracelet,  in  deep  thought. 

His  meditation  was  interrupted  by  a  most 
awkward  incident.  In  the  excitement  of  the 
bestowal  of  gifts  by  the  Human  Beings,  and  in 
the  confusion  of  the  entrance  of  the  thirteenth 
and  uninvited  Human  Being,  one  of  them  all 
had  been  forgotten  and  had  got  himself  shuffled 
well  at  the  back  of  everyone.  And  now  he  came 
pressing  forward  in  great  embarrassment,  to 
bring  his  gift.  It  was  the  day  labourer,  and 
several  of  the  Human  Beings^  drew  has- 
tily back  as  he  approached  the  dais.  But 
everyone  fell  still  farther  back  in  consternation 
when  it  was  seen  what  he  had  brought.  For 
on  the  delicate  cobweb  coverlet  of  the  little 
princess's  bed,  he  cast  a  spadeful  of  earth. 

"It's  all  I've  got,"  the  man  said,  "or  I'd 
brought  a  better." 

The  earth  all  but  covered  the  little  bed  of 
the  princess,  and  it  was  necessary  to  lift  her 
from  it,  which  the  fairy  queen  did  with  her 
own  hands,  flashing  a  reproachful  glance  at  her 
husband,  the  king.  But  when  the  party  had 


THE   PRINCESS   ROMANCIA  127 

trooped  away  for  the  dancing,  —  with  the 
orchestra  playing  the  way  a  Summer  night 
would  sound  if  it  were  to  steep  itself  in  music, 
so  that  it  .could  only  be  heard  and  not  seen,  — 
then  the  king  came  quietly  back  to  the  christen- 
ing chamber  and  ordered  the  spadeful  of  earth 
to  be  gathered  up  and  put  in  a  certain  part  of 
the  palace  garden. 

And  so  (the  Human  Beings  having  gone  home 
at  once  and  forgotten  that  they  had  been  pres- 
ent), when  the  music  lessened  to  silence  and 
the  fairies  stole  from  note  to  note  and  at  last 
drifted  away  as  invisibly  as  the  hours  leave 
a  dial,  they  passed,  in  the  palace  garden,  a  great 
corner  of  the  rich  black  earth  which  the  day 
labourer  had  brought  to  the  princess.  And  it 
was  ready  for  seed  sowing. 

The  Princess  Romancia  grew  with  the  days 
and  the  years,  and  from  the  first  it  was  easily 
to  be  seen  that  certainly  she  seemed  different 
from  everyone  in  the  world.  As  a  baby  she 
began  talking  in  her  cradle  without  having  been 
taught  —  not  very  plainly,  to  be  sure,  or  so 
that  anybody  in  particular  excepting  the  fairy 
queen  understood  her  —  but  still  she  talked. 
As  a  little  girl  she  seemed  always  to  be  listening 


128          WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

to  things  as  if  she  understood  them  as  well  as 
she  did  people,  or  better.  When  she  grew 
older,  nobody  knew  quite  how  she  differed,  but 
everybody  agreed  that  she  seemed  different. 
And  this  the  princess  knew  better  than  anybody, 
and  most  of  the  time  it  made  her  hurt  all  over. 
When  the  fairies  played  at  thistle-down  ball, 
the  princess  often  played  too,  but  she  never  felt 
really  like  one  of  them  all.  She  felt  that  they 
were  obliged  to  have  her  play  with  them  because 
she  was  the  princess,  and  not  because  they 
wanted  her.  When  they  played  at  hide-and-go- 
seek  in  a  flower  bed,  somehow  the  others  always 
hid  together  in  the  big  flowers,  and  the  princess 
hid  alone  in  a  tulip  or  a  poppy.  And  whenever 
they  whispered  among  themselves,  she  always 
fancied  that  they  were  whispering  of  her.  She 
imagined  herself  often  looked  at  with  a  smile  or 
a  shrug ;  she  began  to  believe  that  she  was  not 
wanted  but  only  endured  because  she  was  the 
princess,  and  she  was  certain  that  no  one  liked 
her  for  herself  alone,  because  she  was  somehow 
so  different.  Little  by  little  she  grew  silent, 
and  refused  to  join  in  the  games,  and  sat  apart 
alone.  Presently  she  began  to  give  blunt  an- 
swers and  to  take  exception  and  even  to  dis- 


LITTLE  BY  LITTLE  SHE  GREW  SILENT  AND  REFUSED  TO  JOIN 

IN    THE    GAMES. 


THE   PRINCESS   ROMANCIA  129 

agree.  And,  of  course,  little  by  little  the  court 
began  secretly  to  dislike  her,  and  to  cease  to  try 
f  to  understand  her,  and  they  told  one  another 
that  she  was  hopelessly  different  and  that  that 
was  all  that  there  was  to  be  said  about  her. 

But  in  spite  of  all  this,  the  Princess  Romancia 
was  very  beautiful,  and  the  fame  of  her  beauty 
went  over  the  whole  of  fairyland.  When  enough 
years  had  gone  by,  fairy  princes  from  this  and 
that  dominion  began  to  come  to  the  king's 
palace  to  see  her.  But  though  they  all  admired 
the  princess's  great  beauty,  many  were  of  course 
repelled  by  her  sharp  answers  and  her  constant 
suspicions. 

But  at  last  the  news  of  the  princess's  beauty 
and  strangeness  reached  the  farthest  border  of 
fairyland  and  came  to  the  ears  of  the  young 
Prince  Hesperus.  Now  Prince  Hesperus,  who 
was  the  darling  of  his  father's  court  and  beloved 
of  everybody,  was  tired  of  everybody.  "Every 
fairy  is  like  every  other  fairy,"  he  was  often  heard 
saying  wearily.  "I  do  wish  I  could  find  some- 
body with  a  few  new  ways.  One  would  think 
fairies  were  all  cut  from  one  pattern  !"  There- 
fore, when  word  came  to  him  of  the  strange  and 
beautiful  Princess  Romancia,  who  was  believed 


130  WHEN   I  WAS  A   LITTLE   GIRL 

to  be  different  from  everyone  else  in  the  world, 
you  can  imagine  with  what  haste  he  made  ready 
and  set  out  for  her  father's  place. 

Prince  Hesperus  arrived  at  the  palace  at 
twilight,  when  the  king's  garden  was  wrapped 
in  that  shadow  light  which  no  one  can  step 
through,  if  he  looks,  without  feeling  somewhat 
like  a  fairy  himself  and  glad  to  be  one.  He 
sent  his  servants  on  ahead,  folded  his  wings,  and 
proceeded  on  foot  through  the  silent  gardens. 
And  in  a  little  arbour  made  of  fallen  petals, 
renewed  each  day,  he  came  on  the  Princess 
Romancia,  asleep.  He,  of  course,  did  not  recog- 
nize her,  but  never,  since  for  him  the  world 
began,  had  the  prince  seen  anyone  so  beautiful. 

His  step  roused  her  and  she  sprang  to  her  feet. 
And  as  soon  as  he  looked  at  her,  Prince  Hesperus 
found  himself  wanting  to  tell  her  of  what  he  had 
just  been  thinking,  and  before  he  knew  it  he  was 
doing  so. 

"I  have  just  been  thinking,"  he  said,  "what 
a  delightful  pet  a  leaf-shadow  would  make,  if 
one  could  catch  it  and  tame  it.  I  wonder  if 
one  could  do  it  ?  Think  how  it  would  dance 
for  one,  all  day  long." 

The  Princess  Romancia  stared  a  little. 


THE   PRINCESS   ROMANCIA  131 

"But  when  the  sun  went  down,"  she  was  sur- 
prised into  saying,  "the  shadow  would  be  dead." 

"Not  at  all,"  the  prince  replied,  "it  would 
only  be  asleep.  And  it  would  never  have  to  be 
fed,  and  it  could  live  in  one's  palace." 

"I  would  like  such  a  pet,"  said  the  princess, 
thoughtfully. 

"If  I  may  walk  with  you,"  said  the  prince, 
"we  will  talk  more  about  it." 

They  walked  together  toward  the  palace  and 
talked  more  about  it,  so  that  the  Princess  Ro- 
mancia  quite  forgot  to  be  more  different  than 
she  was,  and  the  prince  forgot  all  about  every- 
thing save  his  companion.  And  he  saw  about 
her  all  the  gifts  of  tenderness  and  vision  and 
magic,  of  sea  secrets  and  sea  spells,  of  music 
and  colours  and  knowledge  and  charming  notions 
which  the  Human  Beings  had  brought  her  at 
her  birth,  though  these  hardly  ever  were  visible 
because  the  princess  seemed  so  different  from 
everybody  else.  And  when,  as  they  drew  near 
the  palace,  their  servants  came  hastening  to 
escort  them,  the  two  looked  at  each  other  in  the 
greatest  surprise  to  find  that  they  were  prince 
and  princess.  For  all  other  things  had  seemed 
so  much  more  important. 


132  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

Their  formal  meeting  took  place  that  evening 
in  the  Vasty  Hall,  where,  years  before,  the 
princess  had  been  christened.  Prince  Hesperus 
was  filled  with  the  most  joyous  anticipation 
and  awaited  his  presentation  to  the  princess 
with  the  feeling  that  fairyland  was  just  begin- 
ning. But  the  princess,  on  the  other  hand,  was 
no  sooner  back  in  the  palace  among  her  ladies 
than  the  curse  of  her  terrible  christening  present 
descended  upon  her  as  she  had  never  felt  it  be- 
fore. How,  the  poor  princess  thought,  could 
the  prince  possibly  like  her,  who  was  so  different 
from  everybody  in  the  world  ?  While  she  was 
being  dressed,  every  time  that  her  ladies  spoke 
in  a  low  tone,  she  imagined  that  they  were  speak- 
ing of  her ;  every  time  that  one  smiled  and  shook 
her  head,  the  princess  was  certain  that  it  was 
in  pity  of  her.  She  fancied  that  they  knew  that 
her  walk  was  awkward,  her  voice  harsh,  her 
robe  in  bad  taste,  and  an  old  fear  came  upon 
her  that  the  palace  mirrors  had  all  been  changed 
to  conceal  from  her  that  she  was  really  very 
ugly.  In  short,  by  the  time  that  she  was  ex- 
pected to  descend,  poor  Princess  Romancia  had 
made  herself  utterly  miserable. 

Therefore,  when,  in  her  gown  of  fresh  cobweb, 


THE   PRINCESS   ROMANCIA  133 

the  princess  entered  the  hall  and  the  prince 
hastened  eagerly  forward,  she  hardly  looked  at 
him.  And  when,  at  the  banquet  that  followed, 
he  sat  beside  her  and  tried  to  continue  their 
talk  of  the  arbour  and  the  walk,  she  barely 
replied  at  all. 

"How  beautiful  you  are,"  he  murmured. 

"So  is  the  night,"  said  the  princess,  "and  you 
do  not  tell  the  night  that  it  is  beautiful." 

"Your  eyes  are  like  stars,"  the  prince  said. 

"There  are  real  stars  above,"  said  the  prin- 
cess. 

"You  are  like  no  one  else  !"  cried  the  prince. 

"  At  least  you  need  not  charge  me  with  that," 
said  the  poor  princess. 

Nor  would  she  dance  with  him  or  with  anyone 
else.  For  she  imagined  that  they  did  not  wish 
to  dance  with  her,  and  that  her  dancing  was 
worse  than  anyone's.  And  as  soon  as  she  was 
able,  and  long  before  cock-crow,  she  slipped 
away  from  them  all  and  went  to  sleep  in  a  handy 
crocus  cup. 

-  Now  at  all  this  the  king  and  queen  were 
nearly  as  distressed  as  the  prince,  and  they  were 
obliged  to  tell  Prince  Hesperus  the  whole  story 
of  the  christening.  When  he  heard  about  the 


134          WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

uninvited  Human  Being  who  had  given  the 
baby  princess  this  dreadful  present  and  had  kept 
the  key  to  the  bracelet  which  was  its  bond,  he 
sprang  up  and  grasped  his  tiny  sword. 

"I  will  go  out  in  the  world  and  find  this 
Human  Being,"  he  cried,  "and  I  will  bring  back 
the  bracelet  key." 

Without  again  seeing  the  princess,  Prince 
Hesperus  left  the  palace  and  fared  forth  on  his 
quest.  And  when  she  found  that  he  was  gone, 
she  was  more  wretched  than  ever  before.  For 
in  her  life  no  one  had  ever  talked  to  her  as  he 
had  talked,  speaking  his  inmost  fancies,  and 
when  she  had  lost  him,  she  wanted  more  than 
ever  to  talk  with  him.  But  the  king,  who  was 
a  very  wise  fairy,  did  not  tell  her  where  the 
prince  had  gone. 

And  now  the  Princess  Romancia  did  not  know 
what  to  do  with  herself.  The  court  was  un- 
bearable; all  her  trivial  occupations  bored  her; 
and  the  whole  world  seemed  to  have  been  made 
different  from  all  other  worlds.  Worst  to  endure 
was  the  presence  of  her  companions,  who  all 
seemed  to  love  and  to  understand  one  another, 
while  she  only  was  alone  and  out  of  their  sym- 
pathy. 


THE   PRINCESS   ROMANCIA  135 

"Oh,"  she  cried,  "if  only  I  had  a  game  or  a 
task  to  do  with  somebody  or  something  that 
didn't  know  I  am  different  —  that  wouldn't 
know  who  I  am  !" 

And  she  thought  longingly  of  the  prince's 
fancy  about  the  leaf-shadow  for  a  pet  which 
should  dance  with  one  all  day  long. 

"A  leaf-shadow  would  not  know  that  I  am 
not  like  everybody  else!"  the  poor  princess 
thought. 

One  night,  when  a  fairy  ring  had  been  formed 
in  an  open  grassy  space  among  old  oaks,  the 
princess  could  bear  it  all  no  longer.  When  the 
music  was  at  its  merriest  and  a  band  of  strolling 
goblin  musicians  were  playing  their  maddest, 
she  slipped  away  and  returned  to  the  palace  by 
an  unfrequented  path  and  entered  a  long-dis- 
used part  of  the  garden.  And  there,  in  a  corner 
where  she  had  never  before  walked,  she  came  on 
a  great  place  of  rich,  black  earth,  which,  in  the 
sweet  Spring  air,  lay  ready  for  the  sowing.  It 
was  the  spadeful  of  earth  which  the  day  labourer 
had  brought  to  her  christening;  and  there,  for 
all  these  years,  the  king  had  caused  it  to  remain 
untouched,  its  own  rank  weed  growth  enrich- 
ing its  richness,  until  but  a  touch  would  now 


136  WHEN   I   WAS   A   LITTLE   GIRL 

turn  it  to  fruitage.  And  seeing  it  so,  and  being 
filled  with  her  wish  for  something  which  should 
take  her  thought  away  from  herself  and  from  her 
difference  from  all  the  world,  the  Princess  Ro- 
mancia  was  instantly  minded  to  make  a  garden. 

Night  being  the  work  time  and  play  time  of 
the  fairies,  the  princess  went  at  once  to  the 
palace  granaries  and  selected  seeds  of  many 
kinds,  flower  and  vegetable  and  fern  seeds,  and 
she  brought  them  to  this  corner  of  rich  earth, 
and  there  she  planted  them,  under  the  moon. 
She  would  call  no  servants  to  help  her,  fearing 
lest  they  would  smile  among  themselves  at  her 
strange  doing.  All  night  she  worked  at  the 
planting,  and  when  morning  came,  she  fell 
asleep  in  a  mandrake  blossom,  and  woke  hungry 
for  a  breakfast  of  honeydew  and  thinking  of 
nothing  save  getting  back  to  her  new  gardening. 

The  Wind  helped  her,  and  as  the  days  passed, 
the  Sun  and  the  Rain  helped  her,  and  she  used 
certain  magic  which  she  knew,  so  that  presently 
her  garden  was  a  glory.  Poppies  and  corn, 
beans  and  berries,  green  peas  and  sweet  peas, 
pinks  and  potatoes,  celery  and  white  phlox, 
melons  and  cardinal  flowers  —  all  these  grew 
wonderfully  together,  as  it  were,  hand  in  hand, 


THE   PRINCESS   ROMANCIA  137 

as  they  will  grow  for  fairy  folk,  and  in  such  great 
luxuriance  that  the  princess  wrought  early  and 
late  to  keep  them  ordered  and  watered.  She 
would  have  no  servants  to  help  her,  for  she  grew 
more  and  more  to  love  her  task.  For  here  at 
last  in  her  garden  she  had  found  those  whom  she 
could  not  imagine  to  be  smiling  among  them- 
selves at  anything  that  she  said  or  did ;  but  all 
the  green  things  responded  to  her  hands  like 
friends  answering  to  a  hand  clasp,  and  when  the 
flowers  nodded  to  one  another,  this  meant  only 
that  a  company  of  little  leaf-shadows  were  set 
dancing  on  the  earth,  almost  as  if  they  had  been 
tamed  to  be  her  pets,  according  to  the  prince's 
fancy. 

Up  at  the  palace  the  queen  and  the  ladies-in- 
waiting  to  the  queen  and  the  princess  regarded 
all  this  as  but  another  sign  of  poor  Romancia's 
strangeness.  From  her  tower  window  the  queen 
peered  anxiously  down  at  her  daughter  toiling 
away  at  sunrise. 

"Now  she  is  raising  carrots  and  beets,"  cried 
the  queen,  wringing  her  hands.  "She  grows 
more  different  from  us  every  moment  of  her 
life!" 

"She  seems  to  do  so,"   admitted  the  king; 


138  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

but  he  was  very  wise;  and,  "Let  her  be,"  he 
commanded  everybody.  "We  may  see  what 
this  all  means,  and  a  great  many  other  things 
as  well." 

Meanwhile  Prince  Hesperus,  journeying  from 
land  to  land  and  from  height  to  valley,  was 
seeking  in  vain  for  the  one  person  who,  as  he 
thought,  could  remove  from  the  princess  the 
curse  of  her  difference  from  all  the  rest  of  the 
world.  And  it  was  very  strange  how  love  had 
changed  him ;  for  now,  instead  of  his  silly  com- 
plaint that  every  fairy  is  like  every  other  fairy, 
and  his  silly  longing  for  a  different  pattern  in 
fairies,  he  sought  only  for  the  charm  which 
should  make  his  beloved  princess  like  everybody 
else.  Where  should  he  find  this  terrible  Human 
Being,  this  uninvited  one  who  held  the  key  to 
the  princess's  bracelet  that  was  so  like  a  fetter  ? 

He  went  first  to  the  town  nearest  to  fairyland. 
The  people  of  the  town,  having  no  idea  how  near 
to  fairyland  they  really  were,  were  going  prosa- 
ically about  their  occupations,  and  though  they 
could  have  looked  up  into  the .  magic  garden 
itself,  they  remained  serenely  indifferent.  There 
he  found  the  very  mother  who  had  been  at  the 
christening  of  the  princess ;  and  alighting  close 


THE   PRINCESS   ROMANCIA  139 

to  a  great  task  that  she  was  doing  for  the  whole 
world,  he  tried  to  ask  her  who  it  was  who  makes 
folk  different  from  all  the  rest.  But  she  could 
not  hear  his  tiny,  tiny  voice  which  came  to  her 
merely  as  a  thought  about  something  which 
could  not  possibly  be  true.  In  a  pleasant  valley 
he  came  on  that  one  who,  at  the  christening, 
had  brought  the  lyre  which  played  of  itself, 
but  when  the  prince  asked  him  his  question,  he 
fancied  it  to  be  merely  the  wandering  of  his 
own  melody,  with  a  note  about  something  new 
to  his  thought.  The  poet  by  the  stream  sing- 
ing of  the  brotherhood  of  man,  the  prophet  on 
a  mountain  foreseeing  the  brotherhood  as  in  a 
gazing  crystal,  the  scientist  weaving  the  brother- 
hood in  a  tapestry  of  the  universe  —  none  of 
these  knew  anyone  who  can  possibly  make  folk 
different  from  everybody  else,  nor  did  any  of 
the  others  on  whom  Prince  Hesperus  chanced. 
When  one  day  he  thought  that  he  had  found 
her,  because  he  met  one  whose  face  had  the  look 
of  many  cities  and  was  like  the  painted  cover  of 
an  empty  box,  straightway  he  saw  another  and 
another  and  still  others,  men  and  women  both, 
who  were  like  her,  with  only  the  meaning  of 
those  who  never  look  at  the  stars,  or  walk  in 


I4o          WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE   GIRL 

gardens,  or  think  about  others  rather  than  them- 
selves, or  listen  to  hear  what  is  right  for  them 
to  do.  And  then  he  saw  that  these  are  many 
and  many,  who  believe  themselves  to  be  differ- 
ent from  everybody  else  and  who  try  to  make 
others  so,  and  he  saw  that  it  would  be  useless 
to  look  further  among  them  for  that  one  who 
had  the  key  for  which  he  sought. 

So  at  last  Prince  Hesperus  turned  sadly  back 
toward  the  palace  of  the  princess. 

"Alas,"  said  the  prince,  "it  is  for  her  own 
happiness  that  I  seek  to  have  her  like  other 
people.  For  myself  I  would  love  her  anyway. 
But  yet,  what  am  I  to  do  —  for  she  seems  so 
different  that  she  will  never  believe  that  I  love 
her!" 

It  was  already  late  at  night  when  the  prince 
found  himself  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the 
palace,  and  being  tired  and  travel-worn,  he  re- 
solved to  take  shelter  in  the  cup  of  some  flower 
and  wait  until  the  palace  revelries  were  done. 
Accordingly  he  entered  the  garden  of  an  humble 
cottage  and  crept  within  the  petals  of  a  wild 
lily  growing  in  the  long,  untended  grass. 

He  had  hardly  settled  himself  to  sleep  when 
he  heard  from  the  cottage  the  sound  of  bitter 


THE   PRINCESS   ROMANCIA  141 

crying.  Now  this  is  a  sound  which  no  fairy 
will  ever  pass  by  or  ever  so  much  as  hear  about 
without  trying  to  comfort,  and  at  once  Prince 
Hesperus  rose  and  flew  to  the  sill  of  an  open 
lattice. 

He  looked  in  on  a  poor  room,  with  the 
meanest  furnishings.  On  a  comfortless  bed 
lay  the  father  of  the  house,  ill  and  helpless. 
His  wife  sat  by  his  side,  and  the  children 
clung  about  her,  crying  with  hunger  and  min- 
gling their  tears  with  her  own.  The  man  turned 
and  looked  at  her,  making  a  motion  to  speak, 
and  Prince  Hesperus  flew  into  the  room  and 
alighted  on  the  handle  of  a  great  spade,  covered 
with  earth,  which  stood  in  a  corner. 

"Wife,"  the  man  said,  "I've  brought  you 
little  but  sorrow  and  hunger.  I  would  have 
brought  you  more  if  I  had  had  better.  And  now 
I  see  you  starve^" 

"I  am  not  too  hungry,"  the  wife  said  —  but 
the  children  sobbed. 

Prince  Hesperus  waited  not  a  moment.  He 
flew  into  the  night  and  away  toward  the  palace, 
and  missing  the  fairy  ring  where  among  old 
oaks  the  fairies  were  dancing,  he  reached  the 
palace  by  an  unfrequented  path  and  entered  a 


142          WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

disused  part  of  the  palace  garden.  And  there, 
in  a  corner  which  he  had  never  visited,  Prince 
Hesperus  saw  a  marvellous  mass  of  bloom  and 
fruit  —  poppies  and  corn,  beans  and  berries, 
green  peas  and  sweet  peas,  pinks  and  potatoes, 
celery  and  white  phlox,  melons  and  cardinal 
flowers  —  all  growing  wonderfully  together,  as 
it  were,  hand  in  hand.  And  above  them,  in  a 
moon-flower  clinging  to  the  wall,  sat  the  Prin- 
cess Romancia,  rocking  in  the  wind  and  brooding 
upon  her  garden. 

"Come  !"  cried  Prince  Hesperus.  "There  is 
a  thing  to  do  !" 

The  princess  looked  at  him  a  little  fearfully, 
but  he  paid  almost  no  attention  to  her,  so  ab- 
sorbed he  was  in  what  he  wished  to  have  done. 

"Hard  by  is  a  family,"  said  the  prince,  "dying 
of  hunger.  Here  is  food.  Hale  in  these  idlers 
dancing  in  the  light  of  the  moon,  and  let  us 
carry  the  family  the  means  to  stay  alive." 

Without  a  word  the  princess  went  with  him, 
and  they  appeared  together  in  the  fairy  ring 
and  haled  away  the  dancers.  And  when  these 
understood  the  need,  they  all  joined  together, 
fairies,  goblin  musicians  and  all,  and  hurried 
away  to  the  garden  of  the  princess. 


THE   PRINCESS   ROMANCIA  143 

They  wove  a  litter  of  sweet  stems  and  into 
this  they  piled  all  the  food  of  the  princess's 
tending.  And  when  the  queen  would  have  had 
them  send  to  the  palace  kitchen  for  supplies,  the 
king,  who  was  a  wise  fairy,  would  not  permit  it 
and  commanded  that  all  should  be  done  as  the 
prince  wished.  So  when  the  garden  was  rav- 
aged of  its  sweets,  they  all  bore  them  away,  and 
trooped  to  the  cottage,  and  cast  them  on  the 
threshold.  And  then  they  perched  about  the 
room,  or  hovered  in  the  path  of  the  moonlight 
to  hear  what  should  be  said.  And  Prince 
Hesperus  and  Princess  Romancia  listened  to- 
gether upon  the  handle  of  the  poor  man's  spade. 

At  sight  of  the  gifts  the  wife  sprang  up  joy- 
fully and  cried  out  to  her  husband,  and  the 
children  wakened  with  happy  shouts. 

"Here  is  food  — food!"  they  cried.  "Oh, 
it  must  be  from  the  fairies." 

The  sick  man  looked  and  smiled. 

"Ay,"  he  said,  "the  Little  Folk  have  remem- 
bered us.  They  have  brought  us  rich  store  in 
return  for  my  poor  spadeful  of  earth." 

Then  the  prince  and  princess  and  all  the  court 
understood  that  this  poor  man  whom  they  had 
helped  was  that  very  day  labourer  who  had 


144  WHEN   I   WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

come  to  the  christening  of  the  princess.  And 
swift  as  a  moonbeam  —  and  not  unlike  one  — 
Prince  Hesperus  darted  from  beside  the  princess 
and  alighted  on  the  man's  pillow. 

"Ah,"  he  cried,  "can  you  not,  then,  tell  me 
who  it  is  who  has  the  power  to  make  one  dif- 
ferent from  everybody  else  in  the  world  ?" 

In  half  delirium  the  day  labourer  heard  the 
voice  of  the  prince  and  caught  the  question. 
But  he  did  not  know  that  it  was  the  voice  of 
the  prince,  and  he  fancied  it  to  be  the  voice  of 
the  whole  world,  as  it  were  throbbing  with  the 
prince's  question.  And  he  cried  out  loudly  in 
answer :  — 

"No  one  has  that  power  !  No  one  is  different ! 
Those  who  seem  different  hold  no  truth.  We  are 
all  alike,  all  of  us  that  live  !" 

Swiftly  the  prince  turned  to  the  king  and  the 
queen  and  the  court. 

"The  uninvited  Human  Being,"  he  cried, 
"did  she  say  that  the  princess  should  be  differ- 
ent from  all  the  world,  or  that  she  should  merely 
seem  different  ?" 

The  queen  and  the  court  could  not  remember, 
but  the  king,  who  was  a  wise  fairy,  instantly 
remembered. 


THE   PRINCESS   ROMANCIA  145 

"She  said  that  she  should  seem  different,"  he 
said. 

Then  the  prince  laughed  out  joyfully. 

"Ay,"  he  cried,  "seem  different,  indeed  ! 
There  are  many  and  many  who  may  do  that. 
But  this  man  speaks  truth  and  out  of  his  spade- 
ful of  earth  we  have  learned  it,  "We  are  all 
alike )  all  of  us  who  live!" 

With  that  he  grasped  his  tiny  sword  and  flew 
to  the  side  of  the  princess  and  lifted  her  hand 
in  his.  And  with  a  swift,  deft  stroke  he  cut 
from  her  wrist  the  bracelet  that  was  like  a  fetter, 
and  he  took  her  in  his  arms. 

"Ah,  my  princess,"  he  cried.  "You  have 
seemed  different  from  us  all  only  because  you 
would  have  it  so  !" 

The  Princess  Romancia  looked  round  on  the 
court,  and  suddenly  she  saw  only  the  friend- 
liness which  had  always  been  there  if  she  could 
have  believed.  She  looked  on  her  father  and 
mother,  the  king  and  the  queen,  and  she  saw 
only  tenderness.  She  looked  on  the  day  la- 
bourer and  his  family  and  understood  that,  fairy 
and  princess  though  she  was,  she  was  like  them 
and  they  were  like  her.  Last,  she  looked  in  the 
face  of  the  prince  —  and  she  did  not  look  away. 


I46          WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

Invisibly,  as  the  hours  leave  a  dial,  the  fairies 
drifted  from  the  little  room  and  back  to  the 
fairy  ring  among  the  old  oaks  to  dance  for  very 
joyousness.  The  labourer  and  his  family,  hear- 
ing them  go,  were  conscious  of  a  faint  lifting  of 
the  dark,  as  if  morning  were  coming,  bringing  a 
new  day.  And  to  the  Princess  Romancia,  be- 
side Prince  Hesperus,  the  world  itself  was  a 
new  world,  where  she  did  not  walk  alone  as 
she  had  thought,  but  where  all  folk  who  will 
have  it  so  walk  together. 


VIII 

TWO    FOR   THE    SHOW 

FIRST  of  all  there  was  Every  Day,  with  break- 
fast, lunch,  outdoors,  dinner,  and  evenings. 

Then  there  were  Sundays,  which  were  quite 
another  kind  of  time,  as  different  as  layer  cake 
from  sponge  cake:  With  breakfast  late,  and 
mustn't-jump-rope,  and  the  living-room  some- 
how different,  the  Out-of-doors  moved  farther 
off,  our  play-house  not  waiting  for  us  but  acting 
busy  at  something  else  in  which  we  had  no 
part ;  the  swing  hanging  useless  as  it  did  when 
we  were  away  from  home  and  thought  about  it 
in  the  night ;  bells  ringing  as  if  it  were  their  day ; 
until  we  were  almost  homesick  to  hear  the  gro- 
cer's cart  rattle  behind  the  white  horse. 

There  were  school  half  holidays  when  the  sun 
shone  as  it  never  shone  before,  and  we  could  not 
decide  how  to  spend  the  time,  and  to  look  ahead 
seemed  a  glorious  year  before  dark. 

There  were  the  real  holidays  —  Christmas 

147 


148  WHEN   I  WAS  A   LITTLE  GIRL 

and  the  Fourth  and  Birthdays,  which  didn't 
seem  like  days  of  time  at  all,  but  were  like 
fairies  of  time,  not  living  in  any  clock. 

And  Company-time,  when  we  were  not  to  go 
in  certain  rooms,  or  sing  in  the  hall,  and  when 
all  downstairs  seemed  unable  to  romp  with  us. 

And  Vacation-time,  when  9  o'clock  and  I 
o'clock  and  4  o'clock  meant  nothing,  and  the 
face  of  the  clock  never  warned  or  threatened 
and  the  hands  never  dragged,  and  Saturday  no 
longer  stood  out  but  sank  into  insignificance, 
and  the  days  ran  like  sands. 

All  these  times  there  were  when  life  grew 
different  and  either  let  us  in  farther  than  ever 
before  or  else  left  us  out  altogether.  But  al- 
most the  strangest  and  best  of  these  was  house- 
cleaning  time. 

Screens  out,  so  that  the  windows  looked  like 
faces  and  not  like  masks  !  The  couch  under 
the  Cooking-apple  tree  !  We  used  to  lie  on  the 
couch  and  look  up  in  the  boughs  and  wish  that 
they  would  leave  it  there  forever.  What  was 
the  rule  that  made  them  take  it  in  ?  Mattresses 
in  the  backyard  to  jump  on  and  lie  on  and  stare 
up  from,  so  differently,  into  the  blue.  Rugs 
like  rooms,  opening  out  into  an  adjoining  pansy 


TWO  FOR  THE  SHOW  149 

bed.  Chairs  set  about  on  the  grass,  as  if  at 
last  people  had  come  to  understand,  as  we  had 
always  understood,  that  the  Outdoors  is  a  real 
place  to  be  in,  and  not  just  a  place  to  pass 
through  to  get  somewhere  else.  If  only,  if  only 
some  day  they  had  brought  the  piano  out  on  the 
lawn  !  To  have  done  one's  practising  out  there, 
just  as  if  a  piano  were  born,  not  made  !  But 
they  never  did  that,  and  we  were  thankful 
enough  for  the  things  that  they  did  do.  When 
Saturday  came,  I  found  with  relief  that  they  had 
still  the  parlour  and  one  bedroom  left  to  do. 
I  had  been  afraid  that  by  then  these  would  be 
restored  to  the  usual  dry  and  dustless  order. 

In  the  open  window  of  the  empty  sitting-room 
I  was  sitting  negligently  that  morning,  when  I 
saw  Mr.  Britt  going  by.  He  was  as  old  as 
anyone  I  knew  in  the  world  —  Mr.  Britt  must 
have  been  fifty.  I  never  thought  of  him  as 
folks  at  all.  There  were  the  other  neighbours, 
all  dark-haired  and  quick  and  busy  at  the  usual 
human  errands ;  and  then  there  was  Mr.  Britt, 
leaving  his  fruit  trees  and  his  rose  bushes  to  go 
down  to  his  office  in  the  Court  House.  He  had 
white  hair,  a  long  square  white  beard,  and  he 
carried  a  stick  with  a  crook  in  the  handle.  I 


150          WHEN  I  WAS  A   LITTLE  GIRL 

watched  him  pityingly.  His  life  was  all  done, 
as  tidy  as  a  sewed  seam,  as  sure  as  a  learned 
lesson.  All  lived  out,  a  piece  at  a  time,  just  as 
I  planned  mine.  How  immeasurably  long  it 
had  taken  him ;  what  a  slow  business  it  must 
have  seemed  to  him ;  how  very  old  he  was  ! 

At  our  gate  he  stopped.  Mr.  Britt's  face 
was  pink,  and  there  were  pleasant  wrinkles  at 
the  corners  of  his  eyes,  and  when  he  talked,  he 
seemed  to  think  about  you. 

"Moving  ?"  he  inquired. 

"  House-cleaning,"  I  explained  with  importance. 

"Fine  day  of  it,"  he  commented  and  went  on. 
He  always  sighed  a  little  when  he  spoke,  not  in 
sorrow;  but  in  a  certain  weariness. 

In  forty-two  years  I  should  be  as  old  as  that. 
Forty-two  years  —  more  than  five  life-times, 
as  I  knew  them. 

I  was  still  looking  after  him,  trying  to  think  it 
through  —  a  number  as  vast  as  the  sky  of  stars 
was  vast  —  when  round  the  corner,  across  the 
street,  the  Rodman  girls  appeared.  ("Margaret 
and  Betty  Rodman  ? "  my  mother  used  to  in- 
quire pointedly  when  I  said  "the  Rodman 
girls.")  In  their  wake  was  their  little  brother; 
Harold.  I  hailed  them  joyously. 


TWO  FOR  THE  SHOW  151 

"Come  on  over  !     It's  house-cleaning." 

"We  were,"  admitted  Betty,  as  they  ran. 
"We  saw  the  things  out  in  the  yard,  and 
we  asked  right  off.  We  can  stay  a  whole 
hour." 

"Can't  we  get  Mary  Gilbraith  to  tell  us  when 
it's  an  hour  ? "  Margaret  Amelia  suggested  as  they 
came  in  at  the  gate.  "Then  we  won't  have  to 
remember." 

Mary  Gilbraith  stood  beating  a  curtain,  and 
we  called  to  her.  She  nodded  her  head,  wound 
in  a  brown  veil. 

"Sure,"  she  said.  "And  don't  you  children 
track  up  them  clean  floors  inside  there." 

I  glanced  over  my  shoulder  into  the  empty 
room. 

"Shall  I  get  down,"  I  inquired  of  my  guests, 
"or  will  you  get  up  ?" 

They  would  get  up,  and  they  did  so.  We 
three  just  fitted  the  sill,  with  Harold  looking 
wistfully  upward. 

"Go  find  a  nice  stick,"  Margaret  Amelia 
advised  him  maternally. 

"What'll  we  play  ?"  I  was  pursuing  politely. 
"Pretend  ?"  I  intimated.  Because  of  course 
there  is  nothing  that  is  quite  so  much  fun  as 


152          WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

pretend.  "Or  real?"  I  conceded  the  alterna- 
tive its  second  place. 

"Pretend  what  ?"  Betty  wanted  to  know. 

"Well,  what  difference  does  that  make  ?" 
I  inquired  scornfully.  "We  can  decide  that 
after." 

However,  we  duly  weighed  the  respective 
merits  of  Lost-in-the-Woods,  Cave-in-the 
Middle-of-the-World,  and  Invisible,  a  selection 
always  involving  ceremony. 

"Harold  can't  play  any  of  them,"  Mar- 
garet Amelia  remembered  regretfully.  "He 
don't  stay  lost  nor  invisible  —  he  wriggles. 
And  Cave  scares  him." 

We  considered  what  to  do  with  Harold, 
and  at  last  mine  was  the  inspiration  —  no  doubt 
because  I  was  on  the  home  field.  In  a  fence 
corner  I  had  a  play-house,  roofed  level  with  the 
fence  top.  From  my  sand-pile  (sand  boxes 
came  later  —  mine  was  a  corner  of  the  garden 
sacred  to  me)  we  brought  tin  pails  of  earth  which 
we  emptied  about  the  little  boy,  gradually  cov- 
ering his  fat  legs  and  nicely  packing  his  plaid 
skirt.  Then  we  got  him  a  baking-powder  can 
cover  for  a  cutter  and  a  handleless  spoon,  and 
we  went  away.  He  was  infinitely  content. 


TWO  FOR  THE   SHOW  153 

"Makin'  a  meat  pie,"  he  confided,  as  we  left 
him. 

Free,  we  were  drawn  irresistibly  back  to 
the  out-of-doors  furniture.  We  jumped  in  the 
middle  of  the  mattresses  lying  in  the  grass,  we 
hung  the  comforters  and  quilts  in  long  over- 
lapping rows  on  the  clothes  line  and  ran  from 
one  end  to  the  other  within  that  tent-like  en- 
closure. Margaret  Amelia  arranged  herself  lan- 
guidly on  the  Brussels  couch  that  ordinarily 
stood  in  the  upstairs  hall  piled  with  leather- 
bound  reports,  but  now,  scales  falling  from  our 
eyes,  we  saw  to  be  the  bank  of  a  stream  whereon 
Maid  Marian  reclined ;  but  while  Betty  and  I 
were  trying  to  decide  which  should  be  Robin 
Hood  and  which  Alan-a-dale  (alas,  for  our  chiv- 
alry .  .  .  we  were  both  holding  out  to  be 
Robin)  Maid  Marian  settled  it  by  dancing  down 
the  stair  carpet  which  made  a  hallway  half 
across  the  lawn.  We  followed  her.  The  ter- 
minus brought  us  back  to  the  parlour  window. 
We  stepped  on  the  coping  and  stared  inside. 
This  was  our  parlour  !  Yet  it  looked  no  more 
like  the  formal  room  which  we  seldom  entered 
than  a  fairy  looks  like  a  mortal.  Many  and 
many  a  time  an  empty  room  is  so  much  more  a 


154          WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

suggestive,  haunted,  beckoning  place  than  ever 
it  becomes  after  its  furniture  gets  it  into  bond- 
age. Rooms  are  often  free,  beautiful  creatures 
before  they  are  saddled  and  bridled  with  alien 
lives  and  with  upholstery,  and  hitched  for 
lumbering,  permanent  uses.  I  felt  this  vaguely 
even  then. 

"It's  like  the  cloth  in  the  store,"  I  observed, 
balancing  on  my  stomach  on  the  sill.  "It's 
heaps  prettier  before  it's  made  up  into  clothes." 

"How  funny,"  said  Margaret  Amelia.  "I 
like  the  trimming  on,  and  the  pretty  buttons." 

"Let's  play,"  I  said  hurriedly;  for  I  had  seen 
in  her  eyes  that  look  which  always  comes  into 
eyes  whose  owners  have  just  called  an  idea 
"funny." 

"Very  well.  But,"  said  Betty,  frankly,  "I'm 
awful  sick  of  playing  Pretend.  You  always 
want  to  play  that.  We  played  that  last  time 
anyhow.  Let's  play  Store.  Let's  play,"  she 
said,  with  sudden  zest,  "Furniture  Store,  out- 
doors." 

The  whole  lawn  became  the  ground  floor  for 
our  shop.  Forthwith  we  arranged  the  aisles 
of  chairs,  stopping  to  sit  in  this  one  and  that 
"to  taste  the  difference."  To  sit  in  the  patent 


TWO  FOR  THE   SHOW  155 

upholstered  rocker,  close  to  the  flowering  cur- 
rant bush  fragrant  with  spicy,  yellow  buds  was 
like  being  somewhere  else. 

"This  looks  like  the  pictures  of  greenhouses," 
said  Margaret  Amelia,  dragging  a  willow  chair 
to  the  Bridal  Wreath  at  the  fork  in  the  brick 
walk.  She  idled  there  for  a  moment. 

"Emily  Broom  says  that  when  they  moved 
she  rode  right  through  town  on  their  velvet 
lounge  on  the  dray,"  she  volunteered. 

We  pictured  it  mutely.  Something  like  that 
had  been  a  dream  of  mine.  Now  and  then,  I  had 
walked  backward  on  the  street  to  watch  a  fur- 
niture wagon  delivering  a  new  chair  that  rocked 
idle  and  unoccupied  in  the  box.  I  always  mar- 
velled at  the  unimaginativeness  of  the  driver 
which  kept  him  on  the  wagon  seat. 

"We've  never  moved,"  I  confessed  regretfully. 

"We  did,"  said  Betty,  "but  they  piled  every- 
thing up  so  good  there  wasn't  anything  left  to 
sit  on.  I  rode  with  the  driver  —  but  his  seat 
wasn't  very  high,"  she  added,  less  in  the  interest 
of  truth  than  with  a  lingering  resentment. 

"Stitchy  Branchett  told  me,"  contributed 
Margaret  Amelia,  "once  he  set  on  the  top  step 
of  the  step  ladder  on  one  of  their  dray 


156          WHEN   I   WAS   A   LITTLE  GIRL 

"I  don't  believe  it,"  I  announced  flatly. 
"It'd  tip  and  pitch  him  off." 

"He  said  he  did,"  Margaret  Amelia  held. 
"Betty  heard  him.  Didn't  he,  Betty  ?  Who  I 
don't  believe  is  Joe  Richmond.  He  says  he 
went  to  sleep  on  a  mattress  on  the  dray  when 
they  moved.  He  couldn't  of." 

"Course  he  couldn't  of,"  we  all  affirmed. 

"Delia  says  they've  moved  six  times  that  she 
can  remember  of  and  she's  rode  on  every  load," 
I  repeated. 

We  all  looked  enviously  across  at  Delia's 
house.  Then,  moved  by  a  common  impulse, 
we  scrambled  back  to  make  the  most  of  our  own 
advantages,  such  as  they  were. 

At  last  the  ground  floor  of  the  furniture  store 
was  all  arranged,  and  the  two  show  windows  set 
with  the  choicest  pieces  to  face  the  street.  And 
when  we  were  ready  to  open  the  place  to  the 
general  public,  we  sat  on  the  edge  of  the  well 
curb  and  surveyed  our  results. 

"Now  let's  start,"  said  Margaret  Amelia. 

At  that  instant  —  the  precision  with  which 
these  things  happen  is  almost  conscious  —  Mary 
Gilbraith  briefly  put  her  head  out  the  kitchen 
window. 


TWO  FOR  THE   SHOW  157 

"It's  just  edgin'  on  'leven,"  she  announced. 
You   children   keep  your  feet  off  them  mat- 


tresses." 


We  stared  at  one  another.  This  was  incred- 
ible. Margaret  Amelia  and  Betty  had  just 
come.  We  had  hardly  tasted  what  the  morning 
might  have  held.  Our  place  of  business  was 
only  at  this  moment  ready  for  us.  We  had  just 
meant  to  begin. 

There  was  no  appeal.  We  went  down  the 
garden  path  for  Harold.  He  sat  where  we 
had  left  him,  somewhat  drowsy  in  the  warm 
sun,  patting  an  enormous  mound  of  moist 
earth.  Busy  with  our  own  wrongs,  we  picked 
him  up  and  stood  him  on  his  feet  without  warn- 
ing him.  An  indignant  roar  broke  from  him. 

"Just  goin'  frost  my  meat  pie!"  he  wailed. 
"Wiv  chocolate  on  !" 

Some  stirring  of  pity  for  our  common  plight 
may  have  animated  us  —  I  do  not  remember. 
But  he  was  hurried  off.  I  went  with  them  to 
the  fence,  gave  them  last  tag  as  became  an  host- 
ess, stood  on  the  gate  as  it  swung  shut,  expe- 
rienced the  fine  jar  and  bang  of  its  closing,  and 
then  hung  wistfully  across  it,  looking  for  the 
unknown. 


158  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

The  elm  and  maple  shadows  moved  pleas- 
antly on  the  cream-coloured  brick  walk  whose 
depths  of  tone  were  more  uneven  than  the 
shadows.  An  oriole  was  calling,  hanging  back 
downward  from  a  little  bough.  Somebody's 
dog  came  by,  looked  up  at  me,  wagged  his  tail, 
and  hurried  on  about  his  business.  Looking 
after  him,  I  saw  Mr.  Britt  coming  slowly  home 
with  his  mail.  At  our  gate  he  stopped. 

"Playing  something  ?"  he  inquired. 

Welcoming  any  sympathy,  I  told  him  how  we 
had  just  got  ready  to  play  when  it  was  time  to 
stop.  He  nodded  with  some  unexpected  un- 
derstanding, closing  his  eyes  briefly. 

"That's  it,"  he  said.  "We  all  just  get  ready 
when  it's  time  to  stop.  Fine  day  of  it,"  he 
added,  and  sighed  and  went  on. 

I  stared  after  him.  Could  it  be  possible 
that  his  life  had  not  seemed  long  to  him  ?  That 
he  felt  as  if  he  had  hardly  begun  ?  I  dismissed 
this  as  utterly  improbable.  Fifty  years  ! 


IX 

NEXT   DOOR 

THE  house  next  door  had  been  vacant  for 
two  months  when  the  New  Family  moved  in. 
We  had  looked  forward  with  excitement,  not 
unmodified  by  unconscious  aversion,  to  the 
arrival  of  the  New  Family. 

"Have  they  any  girls  ?"  we  had  inquired 
when  the  To  Rent  sign  had  come  down. 

They  had,  it  appeared,  one  girl.  We  saw  her, 
with  wavy  hair  worn  "let  down"  in  the  morn- 
ing, though  we  ourselves  wore  let-down  hair 
only  for  occasions,  pig-tails  denoting  mornings. 
She  had  on  new  soles  —  we  saw  them  showing 
clean  as  she  was  setting  her  feet  daintily;  and 
when  we,  who  were  walking  the  fence  between 
the  two  houses,  crossed  glances  with  her,  we 
all  looked  instantly  away,  and  though  it  was 
with  regret  that  we  saw  her  put  into  the  'bus 
next  day  to  go,  we  afterward  learned,  to  spend 
the  Spring  with  her  grandmother  in  a  dry  cli- 


160          WHEN   I  WAS  A   LITTLE  GIRL 

mate,  we  still  felt  a  certain  satisfaction  that  our 
social  habits  were  not  to  be  disquieted. 

Nothing  at  all  had  been  suspected  of  a  New 
Boy.  Into  that  experience  I  came  without 
warning. 

I  was  sitting  on  the  flat  roof  of  my  play- 
house in  the  fence  corner,  laboriously  writing 
on  the  weathered  boards  with  a  bit  of  a  picket, 
which,  as  everybody  knows,  will  make  very  clear 
brown  letters,  when  the  woodshed  door  of  the 
house  next  door  opened,  and  the  New  Boy  came 
out.  He  came  straight  up  to  the  fence  and 
looked  up  at  me,  the  sun  shining  in  his  eyes 
beneath  the  rimless  plush  cap  which  he  was 
still  wearing.  He  was  younger  than  I,  so  I  was 
not  too  afraid  of  him. 

"What  you  got  ?"  he  inquired. 

I  showed  him  my  writing  material. 

"I  wrote  on  a  window  with  a  diamond  ring 
a'ready,"  he  submitted. 

I  had  heard  of  this,  but  I  had  never  wholly 
credited  it  and  I  said  so.  Besides,  it  would 
wear  the  ring  out  and  who  wanted  to  wear  out 
a  diamond  ring  to  write  on  a  window  ? 

"It  don't  wear  it  out,"  the  New  Boy  said. 
"It  can  keep  right  on  writing  forever  and  ever." 


NEXT  DOOR  161 

"Nothing  can  keep  right  on  forever,"  I  con- 
tended. 

He  cast  about  for  an  argument. 

"Trees  does,"  he  produced  it. 

I  glanced  up  at  them.  They  certainly 
seemed  to  bear  him  out.  I  decided  to  abandon 
the  controversy,  and  I  switched  with  some 
abruptness  to  a  subject  not  unconnected  with 
trees,  and  about  which  I  had  often  wondered. 

"If  you  was  dirt,"  I  observed,  "how  could 
you  decide  to  be  into  a  potato  when  you  could 
be  into  an  apple  just  as  well  ?" 

The  New  Boy  was  plainly  taken  aback.  Here 
he  was,  as  I  see  now,  doing  his  best  to  be  friendly 
and  to  make  conversation  personal,  to  say 
nothing  of  his  having  condescended  to  parley 
with  a  girl  at  all,  and  I  was  rewarding  him  with 
an  abstraction. 

Said  he:  "Huh?" 

"If  you  was  dirt —  "  I  began  a  little  doubt- 
fully, but  still  sticking  to  the  text. 

"I  ain't  dirt,"  denied  the  New  Boy,  with 
some  heat. 

"I  says,  if  you  was  dirt  — "  I  tried  to  tell  him, 
in  haste  and  some  discomfort. 

He  climbed  down  from  the  fence  on  which  he 


162          WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

had  been  socially  contriving  to  stick,  though  his 
was  the  "plain"  side. 

"There  ain't  any  girl,"  he  observed  with 
dignity,  "  going  to  call  me  dirt,  nor  call  me  if-I- 
was-dirt,  either,"  and  stalked  back  into  the 
woodshed. 

I  looked  after  him  in  the  utmost  distress.  I 
had  been  dealing  in  what  I  had  considered  the 
amenities,  and  it  had  come  to  this.  Already 
the  New  Boy  hated  me. 

I  slipped  to  the  ground  and  waited,  watching 
through  the  cracks  in  the  fence.  Ages  passed. 
At  length  I  heard  him  call  his  dog  and  go  whis- 
tling down  the  street.  I  climbed  on  the  fence 
and  sat  looking  over  in  the  deserted  garden. 

Round  the  corner  of  the  house  next  door 
somebody  came.  I  saw  a  long,  gray  plaid  shawl, 
with  torn  and  flapping  tassels,  pinned  about  a 
small  figure,  with  long  legs.  As  she  put  her 
hand  on  the  latch,  she  flashed  me  her  smile,  and 
it  was  Mary  Elizabeth.  She  went  immediately 
inside  the  shed  door,  and  left  me  staring.  What 
was  she  doing  there  ?  What  unexpected  places 
I  was  always  seeing  her.  Why  should  she  go  in 
the  woodshed  of  the  New  Family  whom  we 
didn't  even  know  ourselves  ? 


NEXT  DOOR  163 

After  due  thought,  I  dropped  to  the  other 
side  of  the  fence,  and  proceeded  to  the  wood- 
shed door  myself.  It  was  unlatched,  and  as  I 
peered  in,  I  caught  the  sweet,  moist  smell  of 
green  wood,  like  the  cool  breath  of  the  wood 
yard,  where  I  had  first  seen  her.  When  my  eyes 
became  used  to  the  dimness,  I  perceived  Mary 
Elizabeth  standing  at  the  end  of  a  pile  of  wood, 
of  the  sort  which  we  used  to  denominate 
"chunks,"  which  are  what  folk  now  call  fire- 
place logs,  though  they  are  not  properly  fire- 
place logs  at  all  —  only  "chunks"  for  sitting- 
room  stoves  —  and  trying  to  look  meet  to  new 
estates.  They  were  evenly  piled,  and  they  pre- 
sented a  wonderful  presence,  much  more  human 
than  a  wall. 

"See,"  said  Mary  Elizabeth,  absorbedly, 
"every  end  of  one  is  pictures.  Here's  a  wheel 
with  a  wing  on,  and  here's  a  griffin  eating  a 
lemon." 

I  stared  over  her  shoulder,  fascinated.  There 
they  were.  And  there  were  grapes  and  a  chan- 
delier and  a  crooked  street.  .  .  . 

Some  moments  later  we  were  aware  that  the 
kitchen  door  had  opened,  and  that  somebody 
was  standing  there.  It  was  the  woman  of  the 


164  WHEN   I   WAS  A   LITTLE   GIRL 

New  Family,  with  a  black  veil  wound  round 
her  head  and  the  ends  dangling.  She  shook 
a  huge  purple  dust-cloth,  and  I  do  not  seem 
to  recall  that  there  was  anything  else  to  her, 
save  her  face  and  veil  and  the  cloth. 

"Now  then  !"  she  said  briskly,  and  in  a  tone 
of  dreadful  warning.  "  Now  then  !" 

Mary  Elizabeth  turned  in  the  utmost  eager- 
ness and  contrition. 

"Oh,"  she  said,  "I  come  to  see  about  the 
work." 

The  New  Family  Woman  towered  at  us  from 
the  top  of  the  three  steps. 

"How  much  work,"  she  inquired  with  maj- 
esty, "do  you  think  I'd  get  out  of  you,  young 
miss,  at  this  rate  ?" 

Mary  Elizabeth  drew  nearer  to  her  and  stood 
before  her,  down  in  the  chips,  in  the  absurd  shawl. 

"If  you'll  leave  me  come,"  she  said  earnestly, 
"I'll  promise  not  to  see  pictures.  Well,"  she 
added  conscientiously,  "I'll  promise  not  to 
stop  to  look  at  'em." 

How  much  weight  this  would  have  carried, 
I  do  not  know ;  but  at  that  moment  the  woman 
chanced  to  touch  with  her  foot  a  mouse-trap  that 
stood  on  the  top  step,  and  it  "sprung"  and 


NEXT  DOOR  165 

shed  its  cheese.  In  an  instant  Mary  Elizabeth 
had  deftly  reset  and  restored  it.  This  made 
an  impression  on  the  arbiter. 

"You're  kind  of  a  handy  little  thing,  I  see," 
she  said.  "And  of  course  you're  all  lazy,  for 
that  matter.  And  I  do  need  somebody.  Well, 
I've  got  a  woman  coming  for  to-day.  You  can 
begin  in  the  morning.  Dishes,  vegetables,  and 
general  cleaning,  and  anything  else  I  think  you 
can  do.  Board  and  clothes  only,  mind  you  — • 
and  them  only  as  long  as  you  suit," 

"Yes'm.  No'm.  Yes'm."  Mary  Elizabeth 
tried  to  agree  right  and  left. 

Outside  I  skipped  in  the  sun. 

"We're  going  to  be  next-yard  neighbours," 
I  cried,  and  that  reminded  me  of  the  New  Boy. 
I  told  her  about  him  as  we  went  round  by  the 
gate,  there  being  no  cross  piece  for  a  foothold 
on  that  side  the  fence. 

"Oh,"  said  Mary  Elizabeth,  "I  know  him. 
He's  drove  me  home  by  my  braids.  He  doesn't 
mean  anything." 

"Well,"  I  said  earnestly,  "when  you  get  a 
chance,  you  tell  him  that  I  wasn't  calling  him 
dirt.  I  says  if  he  was  dirt,  how  could  he  tell 
to  be  a  potato  or  an  apple." 


i66          WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

Mary  Elizabeth  nodded.  "Lots  of  boys 
pretend  mad,"  she  said  philosophically,  "to  get 
you  to  run  after  them." 

This  was  new  to  me.  Could  it  be  possible 
that  you  had  to  imagine  folks,  and  what  they 
really  meant,  as  well  as  tending  to  all  the  other 
imagining  ? 

"Can't  you  stay  over?"  I  extended  hos- 
pitality to  Mary  Elizabeth. 

She  could  "stay  over,"  it  seemed,  and  with- 
out asking.  This  freedom  of  hers  used  to  fill 
me  with  longing.  To  "stay  over"  without 
asking,  to  go  down  town,  to  eat  unexpected 
offerings  of  food,  to  climb  a  new  tree,  as  Mary 
Elizabeth  could  do,  and  all  without  asking ! 
It  was  almost  like  being  boys. 

Now  that  Mary  Elizabeth  was  to  be  a  neigh- 
bour, a  new  footing  was  established.  This  I 
did  not  reason  about,  nor  did  I  wonder  why 
this  footing  might  not  be  everybody's  footing. 
We  merely  set  to  work  on  the  accepted  basis. 

This  comprised :  Name,  including  middle 
name,  if  any,  and  for  whom  named ;  age,  and 
birthday,  and  particulars  about  the  recent  or 
approaching  birthday;  brothers  and  sisters, 
together  with  their  names,  ages,  and  birthdays ; 


NEXT  DOOR  167 

birthstones ;  grade ;  did  we  comb  our  own  hair ; 
voluntary  information  concerning  tastes  in 
flowers,  colours,  and  food;  and  finally  an  ex- 
amination and  trying  on  of  each  other's  rings. 
The  stone  had  come  out  of  Mary  Elizabeth's 
ring,  and  she  had  found  a  clear  pink  pebble  to 
insert  in  its  place.  She  had,  she  said,  grated 
the  pebble  on  a  brick  to  make  it  fit  and  she  her- 
self thought  that  it  looked  better  than  the  one 
that  she  had  lost,  "but,"  she  added  modestly, 
"I  s'pose  it  can't  be." 

Then  came  the  revelation.  To  finish  com- 
paring notes  we  sat  down  together  in  my  swing. 
And  partly  because,  when  I  made  a  new  friend, 
I  was  nervously  eager  to  give  her  the  best  I  had 
and  at  once,  and  partly  because  I  was  always 
wanting  to  see  if  somebody  would  understand, 
and  chiefly  because  I  never  could  learn  wisdom, 
I  looked  up  in  the  apple  tree,  now  forsaken  of 
all  its  pink,  and  fallen  in  a  great  green  stillness, 
and  I  told  her  about  my  lady  in  the  tree.  I  told 
her,  expecting  now  no  more  than  I  had  received 
from  Delia  and  the  Eversley  girls.  But  Mary 
Elizabeth  looked  up  and  nodded. 

"I  know,"  she  said.  "I've  seen  lots  of  'em. 
They's  a  lady  in  the  willow  out  in  our  alley.  I 


1 68  WHEN   I  WAS  A   LITTLE   GIRL 

see  her  when  I  empty  the  ashes  and  I  pour  'em 
so's  they  won't  blow  on  her." 

I  looked  at  her  speechlessly.  To  this  day  I 
can  remember  how  the  little  curls  were  caught 
up  above  Mary  Elizabeth's  ear  that  morning. 
Struck  by  my  silence  she  turned  and  regarded 
me.  I  think  I  must  have  blushed  and  stam- 
mered like  a  boy. 

"Can  you  see  them  too  ?"  I  asked.  "In  trees 
and  places  ?" 

"Why,  yes,"  she  said  in  surprise.  "Can't 
everybody  ? " 

Suddenly  I  was  filled  with  a  great  sense  of 
protection  for  Mary  Elizabeth.  I  felt  incal- 
culably older.  She  had  not  yet  found  out,  and 
I  must  never  let  her  know,  that  everybody  does 
not  see  all  that  there  is  to  be  seen  in  the  world  ! 

One  at  a  time  I  brought  out  my  treasures 
that  morning  and  shared  them  with  her,  as 
treasures ;  and  she  brought  out  hers  as  matters 
of  course.  I  remember  that  I  told  her  about 
the  Theys  that  lived  in  our  house.  They  were 
very  friendly  and  wistful.  They  never  pre- 
sumed or  frightened  one  or  came  in  the  room 
when  anyone  was  there.  But  the  minute  folk 
left  the  room  —  ah,  then  !  They  slipped  out 


"BUT  THE  MINUTE  FOLK  LEFT  THE  ROOM  —  AH  THEN.' 


NEXT  DOOR  169 

from  everywhere  and  did  their  living.  I  was 
always  trying  to  catch  them.  I  would  leave  a 
room  innocently,  and  then  whirl  and  fling  it 
open  in  the  hope  of  surprising  them.  But 
always  They  were  too  quick  for  me.  In  the  times 
when  the  family  was  in  the  rooms  and  They  were 
waiting  for  us  to  go,  They  used  to  watch  us, 
still  friendly  and  wistful,  but  also  a  little  criti- 
cal. Sometimes  a  whole  task,  or  a  mood,  could 
be  got  through  pleasantly  because  They  were 
looking  on. 

Mary  Elizabeth  nodded.  "They  like  our 
parlour  best,"  she  said.  "They  ain't  any  fur- 
niture in  there.  They  don't  come  much  in  the 
kitchen." 

It  was  the  same  at  our  house.  They  were 
always  lurking  in  the  curtained  parlour,  but 
the  cheery,  busy  kitchen  seldom  knew  them  — 
except  when  one  went  out  for  a  drink  of  water 
late  at  night.  Then  They  barely  escaped  one. 

How  she  understood  !  Delia  I  loved  with  all 
the  loyalties,  but  I  could  not  help  remembering  a 
brief  conversation  that  I  had  once  held  with  her. 

"Do  you  have  Theys  at  your  house  ?"  I 
had  asked  her,  at  the  beginning  of  our  acquaint- 
ance. 


170          WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

"Yes,"  she  admitted  readily.  "Company 
all  this  week.  From  Oregon.  They  do  their 
hairs  on  kids." 

"I  don't  mean  them,"  I  explained.  "I  mean 
Theys,  that  live  in  between  your  rooms." 

"We  don't  let  mice  get  in  our  house,"  she 
replied  loftily,  "Only  sometimes  one  gets  in 
the  woodshed.  Do  you  use  Choke-'em  traps, 
or  Catch-'em-alive  traps  and  have  the  cat 
there?" 

"Catch-them-alive-and-let-them-out-in-the-al- 
ley  traps,"  I  told  her,  and  gave  up  hope,  I 
remember,  and  went  on  grating  more  sugar- 
stone  for  the  mud-pie  icing. 

Mary  Elizabeth  and  I  made  mud  pies  that 
morning  too,  but  all  the  time  we  made  them  we 
pretended.  Not  House-keep,  or  Store,  or  Bak- 
ery, or  Church-sale — none  of  these  pale  pretend- 
ings  to  which  I  had  chiefly  been  bound,  save 
when  I  played  alone.  But  now  every  pie  and 
cake  that  we  finished  we  two  carried  care- 
fully and  laid  here  and  there,  under  raspberry 
bushes,  in  the  crotch  of  the  apple  tree,  on  the 
wood-chopper's  block. 

"For  Them  to  get  afterwards,"  we  said 
briefly.  We  did  not  explain  —  I  do  not  think 


NEXT  DOOR  171 

that  we  could  have  explained.  And  we  knew 
nothing  of  the  old  nights  in  the  motherland 
when  from  cottage  supper  tables  scraps  of  food 
were  flung  through  open  doors  for  One  Waiting 
Without.  But  this  business  made  an  even  more 
excellent  thing  of  mud-pie  baking,  always  a 
delectable  pastime. 

When  the  noon  whistle  was  blowing  up  at  the 
brick  yard,  a  shadow  darkened  our  pine  board. 
It  was  the  New  Boy.  One  of  his  cheeks  pro- 
truded extravagantly.  Silently  he  held  out  to 
me  a  vast  pink  substance  of  rock-like  hardness, 
impaled  on  a  stick.  Then,  with  an  obvious 
effort,  more  spiritual  than  physical,  he  extracted 
from  his  pocket  a  third  of  the  kind,  for  Mary 
Elizabeth,  on  whose  presence  he  had  not  counted. 
We  accepted  gratefully,  I  in  the  full  spirit  of 
the  offer.  Three  minutes  later  he  and  I  were 
at  our  respective  dinner  tables,  trying,  I  sup- 
pose, to  discuss  this  surreptitious  first  course 
simultaneously  with  our  soup  ;  and  Mary  Eliza- 
beth, on  her  way  home,  was  blissfully  partaking 
of  her  hors  tfceuvre,  unviolated  by  any  soup. 

"What  are  the  new  children  like,  I  wonder  ?" 
said  Somebody  Grown.  "I  see  there  are  two. 
I  don't  know  a  thing  about  the  people,  but  we 


172          WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

can't  call  till  the  woman  at  least  gets  her  cur- 
tains up." 

I  pondered  this.  "Why?"  I  ventured  at 
last. 

"Because  she  wouldn't  want  to  see  us,"  was 
the  reply. 

Were  curtains,  then,  so  important  that  one 
might  neither  call  nor  be  called  on  without  them  ? 
What  other  possible  explanation  could  there 
be  ?  Perhaps  Mary  Elizabeth's  mother  had 
no  curtains  and  that  was  why  our  mothers  did 
not  know  her. 

"Mary  Elizabeth  is  going  to  help  do  the  work 
for  the  New  Family,  and  live  there,"  I  said  at 
last.  "Won't  it  be  nice  to  have  her  to  play 
with?" 

"You  must  be  very  kind  to  her,"  somebody 
said. 

" Kind  to  her!"  It  was  my  first  horrified 
look  into  the  depths  of  the  social  condescensions. 
Kind  to  her  —  when  I  remembered  what  we 
shared  !  I  thought  of  saying  hotly  that  she 
was  my  best  friend.  But  I  was  silent.  There 
was,  after  all,  no  way  to  make  anybody  under- 
stand what  had  opened  to  me  that  morning. 


X 


WHAT'S  PROPER 


DELIA  and  Calista  and  Margaret  Amelia  and 
Betty  Rodman  I  loved  with  devotion.  And 
Mary  Elizabeth  I  likewise  loved  with  devotion. 
Therefore,  the  fact  that  my  four  friends  would 
not,  in  the  language  of  the  wise  and  grown 
world,  "receive"  Mary  Elizabeth  was  to  me 
bitter  and  unbelievable. 

This  astounding  situation,  more  than  inti- 
mated on  the  day  of  the  picnic,  had  its  confir- 
mation a  few  days  after  the  advent  of  Mary 
Elizabeth  in  the  New  Family,  when  the  six  of 
us  were  seated  on  the  edge  of  the  board  walk 
before  our  house.  It  was  the  middle  of  a  June 
afternoon,  a  joyous,  girlish  day,  with  sun  and 
wind  in  that  feminine  mood  which  is  the  fre- 
quent inheritance  of  all  created  things. 

"I  could  'most  spread  this  day  on  my  bread 
like  honey,  and  eat  it  up,  and  not  know  the  dif- 
ference," said  Mary  Elizabeth,  idly.  "The 
queen's  honey  —  the  queen's  honey  —  the 

173 


174          WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

queen's  honey,"  she  repeated  luxuriously,  look- 
ing up  into  the  leaves. 

Delia  leaned  forward.  It  particularly  an- 
noyed her  to  have  Mary  Elizabeth  in  this 
mood. 

"One,  two,  three,  four,  five  of  us,"  Delia 
said,  deliberately  omitting  Mary  Elizabeth  as, 
for  no  reason,  she  counted  us. 

Mary  Elizabeth,  released  from  tasks  for  an 
hour  or  two  before  time  to  "help  with  the  sup- 
per," gave  no  sign  that  she  understood,  save 
that  delicate  flush  of  hers  which  I  knew. 

"Yes,"  she  assented  lazily,  "one,  two,  three, 
four,  five  of  us  —  "  and  she  so  contrived  that 
five  was  her  own  number,  and  no  one  could 
tell  whonTof  us  she  had  omitted. 

"Let's  play  something,"  I  hurriedly  inter- 
vened. "Let's  play  Banquet." 

Action  might  have  proved  the  solvent,  but 
I  had  made  an  ill-starred  choice.  For  having 
selected  the  rectangle  of  lawn  where  the  feast 
was  to  be  spread,  Mary  Elizabeth  promptly 
announced  that  she  had  never  heard  of  a  banquet 
for  five  people,  and  that  we  must  have  more. 

"We've  got  six,"  corrected  Delia,  unwarily. 

"Five,"  Mary  Elizabeth  persisted  tranquilly, 


WHAT'S   PROPER  i?5 

"and  it's  not  enough.  We  ought  to  have 
thirty." 

"Where  you  going  to  get  your  thirty?"  de- 
manded the  exasperated  Delia. 

"Why,"  said  Mary  Elizabeth,  "that's  always 
easy  !"  And  told  us. 

The  king  would  sit  at  the  head,  with  his  prime 
minister  and  a  lord  or  two.  At  the  foot  would 
be  the  queen  with  her  principal  ladies-in-wait- 
ing (at  this  end,  so  as  to  leave  room  for  their 
trains).  In  between  would  be  the  fool,  the  dis- 
coverer of  the  new  land,  the  people  from  the 
other  planets,  us,  and  the  animals. 

"'The  animals!'"  burst  out  Delia.  "Who- 
ever heard  of  animals  at  the  table  ?" 

Oh,  but  it  was  the  animals  that  the  banquet 
was  for.  They  were  talking  animals,  and  every- 
one was  scrambling  to  entertain  them,  and  every 
place  in  which  they  ate  they  changed  their 
shapes  and  their  skins. 

"I  never  heard  of  such  a  game,"  said  Delia, 
outright,  already  sufficiently  grown-up  to  regard 
this  as  a  reason. 

"Let's  not  play  it,"  said  Margaret  Amelia 
Rodman,  languidly,  and,  though  Delia  had  the 
most  emphasis  among  us,  Margaret  Amelia  was 


iy6          WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

our  leader,  and  we  abandoned  the  game.  I 
cannot  recall  why  Margaret  Amelia  was  our 
leader,  unless  it  was  because  she  had  so  many 
hair-ribbons  and,  when  we  had  pin  fairs,  al- 
ways came  with  a  whole  paper,  whereas  the  rest 
of  us  merely  had  some  collected  in  a  box,  or  else 
rows  torn  off.  But  I  suppose  that  we  must 
have  selected  her  for  some  potentiality;  or 
else  it  was  that  a  talent  for  tyranny  was  hers, 
since  this,  like  the  habit  of  creeping  on  all  fours 
and  other  survivals  of  prehistoric  man,  will  often 
mark  one  of  the  early  stages  of  individual  growth. 

This  time  Calista  was  peace-maker. 

"Let's  go  for  a  walk,"  she  said.  "We  can 
do  that  before  supper." 

"You'll  have  to  be  back  in  time  to  help  get 
supper,  won't  you  ?"  Delia  asked  Mary  Eliza- 
beth pointedly. 

Again  Mary  Elizabeth  was  unperturbed,  save 
for  that  faint  flush. 

"Yes,"  she  said,  "I  will.     So  let's  hurry." 

We  ran  toward  the  school  ground,  by  common 
consent  the  destination  for  short  walks,  with 
supper  imminent,  as  Prospect  Hill  was  dedicated 
to  real  walks,  with  nothing  pressing  upon  us. 

"It  says  'Quick,  quick,  quick,  quick,'"  Mary 


WHAT'S   PROPER  177 

Elizabeth  cried,  dragging  a  stick  on  the  pickets 
of,  so  to  say,  a  passing  fence. 

"Why,  that's  nothing  but  the  stick  noise 
hitting  on  the  fence  noise,"  Delia  explained 
loftily. 

"Which  makes  the  loudest  noise  —  the  stick 
or  the  fence?"  Mary  Elizabeth  put  it  to  her. 

"Why —  "  said  Delia,  and  Mary  Elizabeth 
and  I  both  laughed,  like  little  demons,  and  made 
our  sticks  say,  "  Quick,  quick,  quick,  quick  "  as 
far  as  the  big  post,  that  was  so  like  a  man  stand- 
ing there  to  stop  us. 

"See  the  poor  tree.  The  walk's  stepping  on 
its  feet !"  cried  Mary  Elizabeth  when  we  passed 
the  Branchett's  great  oak,  that  had  forced  up 
the  bricks  of  the  walk.  (They  must  already 
have  been  talking  of  taking  it  down,  that  hun- 
dred-year oak,  to  preserve  the  dignity  of  the 
side-walk,  for  they  did  so  shortly  after.) 

This  time  it  was  Margaret  Amelia  who  re- 
volted. 

"Trees  can't  walk,"  she  said.  "There  aren't 
any  feet  there." 

I  took  a  hand.  "You  don't  know  sure,"  I 
reminded  her.  "When  it's  dark,  maybe  they  do 
walk.  I'll  ask  it." 


178          WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

By  the  time  I  had  done  whispering  to  the 
bark,  Delia  said  she  was  going  to  tell  her  mother. 
"Such  lies"  she  put  it  bluntly.  "You'll  never 
write  a  book,  I  don't  care  what  you  say.  You 
got  to  tell  the  truth  to  write  books." 

"Everybody  that  tells  the  truth  don't  write 
a  book,"  I  contended  —  but  sobered.  I  wanted 
passionately  to  write  a  book.  What  if  this 
business  of  pretending,  which  Delia  called  lies 
should  be  in  the  way  of  truthful  book-writing  ? 
But  the  habit  was  too  strong  for  me.  In  that 
very  moment  we  came  upon  a  huge  new  ant- 
hill. 

"Don't  step  on  that  ant-hill.  See  all  the 
ants  —  they  say  to  step  over  it !"  I  cried,  and 
pushed  Delia  round  it  with  some  violence. 

"Well  —  what  makes  you  always  so  —  re- 
ligious!" she  burst  out,  at  the  end  of  her  pa- 
tience. 

I  was  still  hotly  denying  this  implication  when 
we  entered  the  school  yard,  and  broke  into 
running ;  for  no  reason,  save  that  entrances  and 
beginnings  always  made  us  want  to  run  and  shout. 

The  school  yard,  quite  an  ordinary  place 
during  school  hours,  became  at  the  end  of  school 
a  place  no  longer  to  be  shunned,  but  wholly 


WHAT'S   PROPER  179 

desirable.  Next  to  the  wood  yard,  it  was  the 
most  mysterious  place  that  we  knew.  In  the 
school  yard  were  great  cords  of  wood,  suitable 
for  hiding;  a  basement  door,  occasionally  left 
open,  from  which  at  any  moment  the  janitor 
might  appear  to  drive  us  away;  a  band-stand, 
covered  with  names  and  lacking  enough  boards 
so  that  one  might  climb  up  without  use  of  the 
steps ;  a  high-board  fence  on  which  one  always 
longed  to  walk  at  recess ;  a  high  platform  from 
which  one  had  unavailingly  pined  to  jump ; 
outside  banisters  down  which,  in  school-time, 
no  one  might  slide,  trees  which  no  one  might 
climb,  corner  brick-work  affording  excellent 
steps,  which,  then,  none  might  scale;  broad 
outside  window  ledges  on  which  none  might  sit, 
loose  bricks  in  the  walks  ripe  for  the  prying-up, 
but  penalty  attended ;  a  pump  on  whose  iron 
handle  the  lightest  of  us  might  ride  save  that, 
in  school-time,  this  was  forbidden  too.  In 
school-time  this  yard,  so  rich  in  possibilities, 
was  compact  of  restrictions.  None  of  these 
things  might  be  done.  Once  a  boy  had  been 
expelled  for  climbing  on  the  schoolhouse  roof; 
and  thereupon  his  father,  a  painter  by  trade, 
had  taken  the  boy  to  work  with  him,  and  when 


180  WHEN   I   WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

we  saw  him  in  overalls  wheeling  his  father's 
cart,  we  were  told  that  that  was  what  came  of 
disobedience,  although  this  boy  might,  easily 
no  doubt,  otherwise  have  become  President  of 
the  United  States. 

But  after  school !  Toward  supper-time,  or 
in  vacation-time,  we  used  to  love  to  linger  about 
the  yard  and  snatch  at  these  forbidden  pleas- 
ures. That  is,  the  girls  loved  it.  The  boys 
had  long  ago  had  them  all,  and  were  off  across 
the  tracks  on  new  adventures  unguessed  of  us. 

If  anybody  found  us  here  —  we  were  promptly 
driven  ofT.  The  principal  did  this  as  a  matter 
of  course,  but  the  janitor  had  the  same  power 
and  much  more  emphasis.  If  one  of  the  board 
was  seen  passing,  we  hid  behind  everything  and, 
as  we  were  never  clear  just  who  belonged  to  the 
board,  we  hid  when  nearly  all  grown-folk  passed. 
That  the  building  and  grounds  were  ours,  paid 
for  by  our  father's  taxes,  and  that  the  school 
officials  and  even  the  tyrannical  janitor  were 
town  servants  to  help  us  to  make  good  use  of  our 
own,  no  more  occurred  to  us  than  it  occurred  to 
us  to  find  a  ring  in  the  ground,  lift  it,  and  de- 
scend steps.  Nor  as  much,  for  we  were  always 
looking  for  a  ring  to  lift.  To  be  sure,  we  might 


WHAT'S   PROPER  181 

easily  fall  into  serious  mischief  in  this  stolen 
use  of  our  property;  but  that  it  was  the  func- 
tion of  one  of  these  grown-ups,  whom  we  were 
forever  dodging,  to  be  there  with  us,  paid  by 
the  town  to  play  with  us,  was  as  wild  an  expec- 
tation as  that  fairies  should  arrive  with  golden 
hoops  and  balls  and  wings.  Wilder,  for  we 
were  always  expecting  the  fairies  and,  secretly, 
the  wings. 

That  afternoon  we  did  almost  all  these  for- 
bidden things  —  swings  and  seesaws  and  rings 
would  have  done  exactly  as  well,  only  these 
had  not  been  provided  —  and  then  we  went  to 
rest  in  the  band-stand.  Mary  Elizabeth  and 
I  were  feeling  somewhat  subdued  —  neither  of 
us  shone  much  in  feats  of  skill,  and  here  Delia 
and  Margaret  Amelia  easily  put  us  in  our  proper 
places.  Calista  was  not  daring,  but  she  was 
a  swift  runner,  and  this  entitled  her  to  respect. 
Mary  Elizabeth  and  I  were  usually  the  first 
ones  caught,  and  the  others  were  not  above 
explaining  to  us  frankly  that  this  was  why  we 
preferred  to  play  Pretend. 

"Let's  tell  a  story  —  you  start  it,  Mary  Eliza- 
beth," I  proposed,  anxious  for  us  two  to  return  to 
standing,  for  in  collaborations  of  this  kind  Mary 


182  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

Elizabeth  and  I  frankly  shone  —  and  the  wish 
to  shine,  like  the  wish  to  cry  out,  is  among  the 
primitive  phases  of  individual  growth. 

"Let  Margaret  Amelia  start  it,"  Delia  tried 
to  say,  but  already  the  story  was  started,  Mary 
Elizabeth  leaning  far  back,  and  beginning  to 
braid  and  unbraid  her  long  hair  —  not  right 
away  to  the  top  of  the  braid,  which  was  a  serious 
matter  and  not  to  be  lightly  attempted  with 
heavy  hair,  but  just  near  the  curling  end. 

"Once,"  she  said,  "a  big  gold  sun  was  going 
along  up  in  the  sky,  wondering  what  in  the 
world  —  no,  what  in  All-of-it  to  do  with  him- 
self. For  he  was  all  made  and  done,  nice  and 
bright  and  shiny,  and  he  wanted  a  place  to  be. 
So  he  knocked  at  all  the  worlds  and  said,  'Don't 
you  want  to  hire  a  sun  to  do  your  urrants, 
take  care  of  your  garden,  and  behave  like  a  fire 
and  like  a  lamp  ?'  But  all  the  worlds  didn't 
want  him,  because  they  all  had  engaged  a  sun 
first  and  they  could  only  use  one  apiece,  account 
of  the  climate.  So  one  morning  —  he  knew  it 
was  morning  because  he  was  shining,  and  when  it 
was  night  he  never  shone  —  one  morning  .  .  ." 

"Now  leave  somebody  else,"  Delia  suggested 
restlessly.  "Leave  Margaret  Amelia  tell." 


WHAT'S   PROPER  183 

So  we  turned  to  her.  Margaret  Amelia 
considered  solemnly  —  perhaps  it  was  her  fac- 
ulty for  gravity  that  made  us  always  look  up 
to  her  —  and  took  up  the  tale  : 

"One  morning  he  met  a  witch.  And  he  said, 
'Witch,  I  wish  you  would  —  would  give  me 
something  to  eat.  I'm  very  hungry.'  So  the 
witch  took  him  to  her  kitchen  and  gave  him  a 
bowl  of  porridge,  and  it  was  hot  and  burned  his 
mouth,  and  he  asked  for  a  drink  of  water,  and  — 
and—" 

"What  was  the  use  of  having  her  a  witch  if 
that  was  all  he  was  going  to  ask  her  ?"  demanded 
Mary  Elizabeth. 

"They  always  have  witches  in  the  best 
stories,"  Margaret  Amelia  contended,  "and  any- 
way, that's  all  I'm  going  to  tell." 

Delia  took  up  the  tale  uninvited. 

"And  he  got  his  drink  of  water,  pumped  up 
polite  by  the  witch  herself,  and  she  was  going  to 
put  a  portion  in  it.  But  while  she  was  looking 
in  the  top  drawer  for  the  portion,  the  sun  went 
away.  And  — " 

This  time  it  was  I  who  intervened. 

"'Portion!'"  I  said  with  superiority.  "Who 
ever  heard  of  anybody  drinking  a  portion? 
That  word  is  potient" 


184  WHEN   I   WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

Delia  was  plainly  taken  aback. 

"You're  thinking  of  long  division,"  she  said 
feebly. 

"I'm  thinking  of  'Romeo  and  Juliet,'"  I 
responded  with  dignity.  "They  had  one,  in 
the  tomb,  where  Tybalt,  all  bloody — " 

"Don't  say  that  one  —  don't  say  it!"  cried 
Margaret  Amelia.  "I  can  see  that  one  awful 
after  the  light  is  out.  Go  on,  somebody, 
quick." 

To  take  up  her  share  of  the  story,  Betty  Rod- 
man refused,  point-blank.  I  think  that  her 
admission  to  our  group  must  have  been  prin- 
cipally on  the  credentials  of  sistership  to  one  of 
us,  a  basis  at  once  pathetic  and  lovely. 

"I  never  can  think  of  anything  to  have  hap- 
pen," Betty  complained,  "and  if  I  make  some- 
thing happen,  then  it  ends  up  the  story." 

Calista  had  a  nail  in  her  shoe,  and  was  too 
much  absorbed  in  pounding  it  down  with  a 
stone  to  be  approached ;  so,  when  we  had  all 
minutely  examined  the  damage  which  the  nail 
had  wrought,  it  was  my  turn  to  take  up  the 
tale.  And  then  the  thing  happened  which 
was  always  happening  to  me  :  I  could  think  of 
nothing  to  have  the  story  do.  At  night,  and 


WHAT'S   PROPER  185 

when  I  was  alone,  I  could  dream  out  the  most 
fascinating  adventures,  but  with  expectant  faces 
—  or  a  clean  pad  —  before  me,  I  was  dumb  and 
powerless. 

"I  don't  feel  like  telling  one  just  now,"  said 
I,  the  proposer  of  the  game,  and  went  on  dig- 
ging leaves  out  of  a  crevice  in  the  rotting  rail. 
So  Mary  Elizabeth  serenely  took  up  the  tale 
where  she  had  left  it. 

"One  morning  he  looked  over  a  high  sky 
mountain  —  that's  what  suns  like  to  do  best 
because  it  is  so  becoming  —  and  he  shone  in  a 
room  of  the  sky  where  a  little  black  star  was 
sleeping.  And  he  thought  he  would  ask  it 
what  to  do.  So  he  said  to  it,  c  Little  Black 
Star,  where  shall  I  be,  now  that  I  am  all  done  and 
finished,  nice  and  shiny  ? '  And  the  Little 
Black  Star  said:  ' You're  not  done.  What 
made  you  think  you  were  done  ?  Hardly  any- 
body is  ever  done.  I'll  tell  you  what  to  be. 
Be  like  a  carriage  and  take  all  us  little  dark 
stars  in,  and  whirl  and  whirl  for  about  a  million 
years,  and  make  us  all  get  bright  too,  and  then 
maybe  you'll  be  a  true  sun  —  but  not  all  done, 
even  then.'  So  that's  what  he  decided  to  do, 
and  he's  up  there  now,  only  you  can't  see  him, 


i86  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

because  he's  so  far,  and  our  sun  is  so  bright,  and 
he's  whirling  and  whirling,  and  lots  more  like 
him,  getting  to  be  made." 

Delia  followed  Mary  Elizabeth's  look  into 
the  blue. 

"I  don't  believe  it,"  said  she.  "The  sun  is 
biggest  and  the  moon  is  next.  How  could 
there  be  any  other  sun  ?  And  it  don't  whirl. 
It  don't  even  rise  and  set.  It  stands  still. 
Miss  Messmore  said  so." 

We  looked  at  Mary  Elizabeth,  probably  I 
alone  having  any  impulse  to  defend  her.  And 
we  became  aware  that  she  was  quite  white  and 
trembling.  In  the  same  moment  we  under- 
stood that  we  were  hearing  something  which  we 
had  been  hearing  without  knowing  that  we 
heard.  It  was  a  thin,  wavering  strain  of  sing- 
ing, in  a  man's  voice.  We  scrambled  up,  and 
looked  over  the  edge  of  the  band-stand.  Com- 
ing unevenly  down  the  broken  brick  walk  that 
cut  the  schoolhouse  grounds  was  Mary  Eliza- 
beth's father.  His  hat  was  gone.  It  was  he 
who  was  singing.  He  looked  as  he  had  looked 
that  first  day  that  I  had  seen  him  in  the  wood 
yard.  We  knew  what  was  the  matter.  And  all 
of  us  unconsciously  did  the  cruel  thing  of  turn- 
ing and  staring  at  Mary  Elizabeth. 


WHAT'S  PROPER  187 

In  a  moment  she  was  over  the  side  of  the 
band-stand  and  running  to  him.  She  took  him 
by  the  hand,  and  we  saw  that  she  meant  to  lead 
him  home.  Her  little  figure  looked  very  tiny 
beside  his  gaunt  frame,  in  its  loosely  hanging 
coat.  I  remember  how  the  sun  was  pouring 
over  them,  and  over  the  brilliant  green  beyond 
where  blackbirds  were  walking.  I  have  no 
knowledge  of  what  made  me  do  it  —  perhaps 
it  was  merely  an  attitude,  created  by  the  after- 
noon, of  standing  up  for  Mary  Elizabeth  no 
matter  what  befell ;  or  it  may  have  been  a 
child's  crude  will  to  challenge  things ;  at  any 
rate,  without  myself  really  deciding  it,  I  sud- 
denly took  the  way  that  she  had  taken,  and 
caught  up  with  the  two. 

"Mary  Elizabeth,"  I  meant  to  say,  "Pm 
going." 

But  in  fact  I  said  nothing,  and  only  kept  along 
beside  her.  She  looked  at  me  mutely,  and  made 
a  motion  to  me  to  turn  back.  When  her  father 
took  our  hands  and  stumblingly  ran  with  us, 
I  heartily  wished  that  I  had  turned  back.  But 
nearly  all  the  way  he  went  peaceably  enough. 
Long  before  we  reached  their  home  across  the 
tracks,  however,  I  heard  the  six  o'clock  whistles 


188  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

blow,  and  pictured  the  wrath  of  the  mistress  of 
the  New  Family  when  Mary  Elizabeth  had  not 
returned  in  time  to  "help  with  the  supper." 
Very  likely  now  they  would  not  let  her  stay,  and 
this  new  companionship  of  ours  would  have  to 
end.  Mary  Elizabeth's  home  was  on  the  ex- 
treme edge  of  the  town,  and  ordinarily  I  was 
not  allowed  to  cross  the  tracks.  Mary  Eliza- 
beth might  even  move  away  —  that  had  hap- 
pened to  some  of  us,  and  the  night  had  de- 
scended upon  such  as  these  and  we  had  never 
heard  of  them  again :  Hattie  Schenck,  whom  I 
had  loved  with  unequalled  devotion,  where,  for 
example,  was  she  ?  Was  it,  then,  to  be  the 
same  with  Mary  Elizabeth  ? 

Her  mother  saw  us  coming.  She  hurried 
down  to  the  gateway  —  the  gate  was  detached 
and  lying  in  the  weeds  within  —  and  even  then 
I  was  struck  by  the  way  of  maternity  with  which 
she  led  her  husband  to  the  house.  I  remember 
her  as  large-featured,  with  the  two  bones  of  her 
arms  sharply  defined  by  a  hollow  running  from 
wrist  to  elbow,  and  she  constantly  held  her  face 
as  if  the  sun  were  shining  in  her  eyes,  but  there 
was  no  sun  shining  there.  And  somehow,  at 
the  gate  she  had  a  way  of  receiving  him,  and  of 


WHAT'S   PROPER  189 

taking  him  with  her.  Hardly  anything  was 
said.  The  worst  of  it  was  that  no  one  had  to 
explain  anything.  Two  of  the  little  children 
ran  away  and  hid.  Someone  dodged  behind 
an  open  door.  The  man's  wife  led  him  to  the 
broken  couch,  and  he  lay  down  there  like  a  little 
child.  Standing  in  the  doorway  of  that  for- 
lorn, disordered,  ill-smelling  room,  I  first  dimly 
understood  what  I  never  have  forgotten :  That 
the  man  was  not  poor  because  he  drank,  as  the 
village  thought,  but  that  he  drank  because  he 
was  poor.  Instead  of  the  horror  at  a  drunken 
man  which  the  village  had  laid  it  upon  me  to 
feel,  I  suddenly  saw  Mary  Elizabeth's  father 
as  her  mother  saw  him  when  she  folded  her 
gingham  apron  and  spread  it  across  his  shoul- 
ders and  said : 

"Poor  lad." 

And  when,  in  a  few  minutes,  Mary  Elizabeth 
and  I  were  out  on  the  street  again,  running 
silently,  I  remember  feeling  a  great  blind  rage 
against  the  whole  village  and  against  the  whole 
world  that  couldn't  seem  to  think  what  to  do 
any  more  than  Mary  Elizabeth  and  I  could  think. 

The  man  of  the  New  Family  was  watering 
the  lawn,  which  meant  that  supper  was  done. 


190          WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

We  slipped  in  our  back  gate,  —  the  New  Family 
had  none,  —  climbed  the  fence  by  my  play- 
house, dropped  down  into  the  New  Family's 
garden,  and  entered  their  woodshed.  In  my 
own  mind  I  had  settled  that  I  was  of  small 
account  if  I  could  not  give  the  New  Lady  such  a 
picture  of  what  had  happened  that  Mary  Eliza- 
beth should  not  lose  her  place,  and  I  should  not 
lose  her. 

The  kitchen  door  was  ajar.  The  dish-pan 
was  in  the  sink,  the  kettle  was  steaming  on  the 
stove.  And  from  out  the  dining-room  abruptly 
appeared  Calista  and  Delia,  bearing  plates. 

"Girls!"  I  cried,  but  Mary  Elizabeth  was 
dumb. 

Delia  carefully  set  down  her  plate  in  the  dish- 
pan  and  addressed  me : 

"Well,  you  needn't  think  you're  the  only  one 
that  knows  what's  proper,  miss,"  she  said. 

Calista  was  more  simple. 

"We  wanted  to  get  'em  all  done  before  you 
got  back,"  she  owned.  "We  would,  if  Mar- 
garet Amelia  and  Betty  had  of  come.  They 
wanted  to,  but  they  wouldn't  let  'em." 

Back  of  Delia  and  Calista  appeared  the  mis- 
tress of  the  house.  She  had  on  her  afternoon 


WHAT'S  PROPER  191 

dress,   and  her  curl  papers  were  out,   and  she 
actually  smiled  at  Mary  Elizabeth  and  me. 
"Now  then  !"  she  said  to  us. 

If  I  could  have  made  a  dream  for  that  night,  I 
think  it  would  have  been  that  ever  and  ever  so 
many  of  us  were  sitting  in  rows,  waiting  to  be 
counted.  And  a  big  sun  came  by,  whirling  and 
growing,  to  take  us,  and  we  thought  we  couldn't 
all  get  in.  But  there  was  room,  whether  we  had 
been  counted  or  not. 


XI 

DOLLS 

THE  advent  of  the  New  Boy  changed  the  face 
of  the  neighbourhood.  Formerly  I  had  been 
accustomed  to  peep  through  cracks  in  the  fence 
only  to  look  into  a  field  of  corn  that  grew  at 
the  side;  or,  on  the  other  side,  into  raspberry 
bushes,  where  at  any  moment  raspberries  might 
be  gathered  and  dropped  over  the  fence  to  me. 
Also,  there  was  one  place  in  the  deep  green  be- 
fore those  bushes  where  blue-eyed  grass  grew, 
and  I  had  to  watch  for  that.  Then  there  was 
a  great  spotted  dog  that  sometimes  came,  and 
when  he  had  passed,  I  used  to  wait  long  by  the 
high  boards  lest  he  should  return  and  leap  at 
me  to  whom,  so  far,  he  had  never  paid  the 
slightest  attention.  As  a  child,  my  mother 
had  once  jumped  down  into  a  manger  where  a 
great  spotted  dog  was  inadvertently  lying  and, 
though  from  all  accounts  he  was  far  more 
frightened  than  she,  yet  I  feared  his  kind  more 
than  any  other.  .  .  .  The  only  real  excitement 

192 


DOLLS  193 

that  we  had  been  wont  to  know  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood occurred  whenever  there  was  a  Loose 
Horse.  Somebody  would  give  the  alarm,  and 
then  we  would  all  make  sure  that  the  gates 
were  latched  and  we  would  retire  to  watch  him 
fearfully,  where  he  was  quietly  cropping  the 
roadside  grass.  But  sometimes,  too,  a  Loose 
Horse  would  run  —  and  then  I  was  terrified  by 
the  sound  of  his  hoofs  galloping  on  the  side- 
walk and  striking  on  the  bricks  and  boards.  I 
was  always  afraid  that  a  Loose  Horse  would  see 
me,  and  nights,  after  one  had  disturbed  our 
peace,  I  would  dream  that  he  was  trying  to  find 
me,  and  that  he  had  come  peering  between  the 
dining-room  blinds;  and  though  I  hid  under 
the  red  cotton  spread  that  was  used  "between- 
meals,"  it  never  came  down  far  enough,  and  he 
always  stood  there  interminably  waiting,  and 
found  me,  through  the  fringe. 

But  all  these  excitements  were  become  as 
nothing.  A  new  occupation  presented  itself. 
A  dozen  times  a  day  now  I  had  to  watch  through 
the  fence-cracks,  or  through  the  knot-hole,  or 
boldly  between  the  pickets  of  the  front  fence, 
at  the  fascinating  performances  of  the  New  Boy 
and  his  troops  of  friends.  At  any  moment  both 


194  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

Mary  Elizabeth  and  I  would  abandon  what  we 
were  doing  to  go  to  stare  at  the  unaccountable 
activities  which  were  forever  agitating  them. 
They  were  always  producing  something  from 
their  pockets  and  examining  it,  with  their  heads 
together,  or  manufacturing  something  or  bury- 
ing something,  or  disputing  about  something 
unguessed  and  alluring.  Their  whole  world  was 
filled  with  doing,  doing,  doing,  whereas  ours  was 
made  wholly  of  watching  things  get  done. 

On  an  afternoon  Mary  Elizabeth  and  I  were 
playing  together  in  our  side  yard.  It  was  the 
day  for  Delia's  music  lesson,  and  as  she  usually 
did  her  whole  week's  practising  in  the  time  im- 
mediately preceding  that  event,  the  entire  half 
day  was  virtually  wasted.  We  could  hear  her 
going  drearily  over  and  over  the  first  and  last 
movements  of  "At  Home,"  which  she  had  memo- 
rized and  could  play  like  lightning,  while  the 
entire  middle  of  the  piece  went  with  infinite 
deliberation.  Calista  was,  we  understood  (be- 
cause of  some  matter  pertaining  to  having  filled 
the  bath-tub  and  waded  in  it  and  ruined  the 
dining-room  ceiling),  spending  the  day  in  her 
bed.  And  Margaret  Amelia  and  Betty  Rodman 
were  being  kept  at  home  because  the  family 


DOLLS  195 

had  company ;  and  such  was  the  prestige  of  the 
Rodmans  that  the  two  contrived  to  make  this 
circumstance  seem  enviable,  and  the  day  before 
had  pictured  to  us  their  embroidered  white 
dresses  and  blue  ribbons,  and  blue  stockings, 
and  the  Charlotte  Russe  for  supper,  until  we 
felt  left  out,  and  not  in  the  least  as  if  their  com- 
pany were  of  a  kind  with  events  of  the  sort 
familiar  to  us.  Since  I  have  grown  up,  I  have 
observed  this  variety  of  genius  in  others. 
There  is  one  family  which,  when  it  appears  in 
afternoon  gowns  on  occasions  when  I  have  worn 
a  street  dress,  has  power  to  make  me  wonder 
how  I  can  have  failed  to  do  honour  to  the 
day;  but  who,  when  they  wear  street  gowns 
and  I  am  dressed  for  afternoon,  invariably 
cause  me  to  feel  inexcusably  overdressed.  It 
is  a  kind  of  genius  for  the  fit,  and  we  must 
believe  that  it  actually  designates  the  atmos- 
phere which  an  occasion  shall  breathe. 

Mary  Elizabeth  and  I  were  playing  Dolls. 
We  rarely  did  this  on  a  pleasant  day  in  Summer, 
Dolls  being  an  indoor  game,  matched  with  car- 
pets and  furniture  and  sewing  baskets  rather 
than  with  blue  sky  and  with  the  soft  brilliance 
of  the  grass.  But  that  day  we  had  brought 


196  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

everything  out  in  the  side  yard  under  the  little 
catalpa  tree,  and  my  eleven  dolls  (counting  the 
one  without  any  face,  and  Irene  Helena,  the 
home-made  one,  and  the  two  penny  ones)  were 
in  a  circle  on  chairs  and  boxes  and  their  backs, 
getting  dressed  for  the  tea-party.  There  was 
always  going  to  be  a  tea-party  when  you  played 
Dolls  —  you  of  course  had  to  lead  up  to  some- 
thing, and  what  else  was  there  to  lead  up  to  save 
a  tea-party  ?  To  be  sure,  there  might  be  an 
occasional  marriage,  but  boy-dolls  were  never 
very  practical ;  they  were  invariably  smaller 
than  the  bride-doll,  and  besides  we  had  no  mos- 
quito-netting suitable  for  a  veil.  Sometimes 
we  had  them  go  for  a  walk,  and  once  or  twice 
we  had  tried  playing  that  they  were  house- 
cleaning;  but  these  operations  were  not  desir- 
able, because  in  neither  of  them  could  the  dolls 
dress  up,  and  the  desirable  part  of  playing  dolls 
is,  as  everybody  knows,  to  dress  them  in  their 
best.  That  is  the  game.  That,  and  the  tea- 
party. 

"Blue  or  rose-pink?"  Mary  Elizabeth  in- 
quired, indicating  the  two  best  gowns  of  the  doll 
she  was  dressing. 

It  was  a  difficult  question.     We  had  never 


SHE  SETTLED  EVERYTHING  IN  THAT  WAY;  SHE  COUNTED 
THE  PETALS  OF  FENNEL  DAISIES  AND  BLEW  THISTLE 
FROM  DANDELIONS. 


DOLLS  197 

been  able  to  decide  which  of  these  two  colours 
we  preferred.  There  was  the  sky  for  precedent 
of  blue,  but  then  rose-pink  we  loved  so  to  say  ! 

"  If  they's  one  cloud  in  the  sky,  we'll  put  on  the 
rose-pink  one,"  said  Mary  Elizabeth.  "And  if 
there  isn't  any,  that'll  mean  blue." 
;•  She  settled  everything  that  way  —  she 
counted  the  petals  of  fennel  daisies,  blew  the 
thistle  from  dandelions,  did  one  thing  if  she 
could  find  twelve  acorns  and  aixfther  if  they  were 
lacking.  Even  then  Mary  Elizabeth  seemed 
always  to  be  watching  for  a  guiding  hand,  to  be 
listening  for  a  voice  to  tell  her  what  to  do,  and 
trying  to  find  these  in  things  of  Nature. 

We  dressed  the  Eleven  in  their  best  frocks, 
weighing  each  choice  long,  and  seated  them 
about  a  table  made  of  a  box  covered  with  a  towel. 
We  sliced  a  doughnut  and  with  it  filled  two  small 
baskets  for  each  end  of  the  table,  on  which 
rested  my  toy  castor  and  such  of  my  dishes  as 
had  survived  the  necessity  which  I  had  felt 
for  going  to  bed  with  the  full  set,  on  the  night 
of  the  day,  some  years  before,  when  I  had  ac- 
quired them.  We  picked  all  the  flowers  suit- 
able for  doll  decorations  —  clover,  sorrel,  candy- 
tuft, sweet  alyssum.  We  observed  the  unities 


198  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

by  retiring  for  a  time  sufficient  to  occupy  the 
tea-party  in  disposing  of  the  feast ;  and  then  we 
came  back  and  sat  down  and  stared  at  them. 
Irene  Helena,  I  remember,  had  slipped  under 
the  table  in  a  heap,  a  proceeding  which  always 
irritated  me,  as  nakedly  uncovering  the  real 
depths  of  our  pretence  —  and  I  jerked  her  up 
and  set  her  down,  like  some  maternal  Nemesis. 

In  that  moment  a  wild,  I  may  almost  say 
thick,  shriek  sounded  through  our  block,  and 
there  came  that  stimulating  thud-thud  of  feet 
on  earth  that  accompanies  all  the  best  diver- 
sions, and  also  there  came  the  cracking  of  things, 
—  whips,  or  pistols,  or  even  a  punch,  which 
rapidly  operated  will  do  almost  as  well.  And 
down  the  yards  of  the  block  and  over  the  fences 
and  over  the  roof  of  my  play-house  came  tum- 
bling and  shrieking  the  New  Boy,  and  in  his  wake 
were  ten  of  his  kind. 

Usually  they  raced  by  with  a  look  in  their 
eyes  which  we  knew  well,  though  we  never 
could  distinguish  whether  it  meant  robbers  or 
pirates  or  dragons  or  the  enemy.  Usually  they 
did  not  even  see  us.  But  that  day  something 
in  our  elaborate  preparation  to  receive  somebody 
or  to  welcome  something,  and  our  eternal  mo- 


DOLLS  199 

ment  of  suspended  animation  at  which  they  found 
us,  must  have  caught  the  fancy  of  the  New  Boy. 

"Halt !"  he  roared  with  the  force  and  effect 
of  a  steam  whistle,  and  in  a  moment  they  were 
all  stamping  and  breathing  about  Mary  Eliza- 
beth and  me. 

We  sprang  up  in  instant  alarm  and  the  vague, 
pathetic,  immemorial  impulse  to  defence.  We 
need  not  have  feared.  The  game  was  still 
going  forward  and  we  were  merely  pawns. 

"Who  is  the  lord  of  this  castle?"  demanded 
the  New  Boy. 

"Bindyliggs,"  replied  Mary  Elizabeth,  with- 
out a  moment's  hesitation,  a  name  which  I 
believe  neither  of  us  to  have  heard  before. 

"Where  is  this  Lord  of  Bindyliggs  ?"  the 
New  Boy  pressed  it. 

Mary  Elizabeth  indicated  the  woodshed. 
"At  meat,"  she  added  gravely. 

"Forward  !"  the  New  Boy  instantly  com- 
manded, and  the  whole  troop  disappeared  in 
our  shed.  We  heard  wood  fall,  and  the  clash 
of  meeting  weapons,  and  the  troop  reappeared, 
two  by  way  of  the  low  window. 

"Enough  ! "  cried  the  New  Boy,  grandly.  "We 
have  spared  him,  but  there  is  not  a  moment  to 


200  WHEN   I   WAS  A  LITTLE   GIRL 

lose.  You  must  come  with  us  immediately. 
What  you  got  to  eat  ?" 

Raptly,  we  gave  them,  from  under  the  wistful 
noses  of  Irene  Helena  and  the  doll  without  the 
face  and  the  rest,  the  entire  sliced  doughnut, 
and  two  more  doughnuts,  dipped  in  sugar, 
which  we  had  been  saving  so  as  to  have  some- 
thing to  look  forward  to. 

"Come  with  us,"  said  the  New  Boy,  graciously. 
"To  horse  !  We  may  reach  the  settlement  by 
nightfall  —  if  we  escape  the  Brigands  in  the 
Wood.  The  Black  Wood,"  he  added. 

Even  then,  I  recall,  I  was  smitten  with  won- 
der that  he  who  had  shown  so  little  imagination 
in  that  matter  of  dirt  and  apples  and  potatoes 
should  here  be  teeming  with  fancy  on  his  own 
familiar  ground.  It  was  years  before  I  under- 
stood that  there  are  almost  as  many  varieties 
of  imaginative  as  of  religious  experience. 

Fascinated,  we  dropped  everything  and  fol- 
lowed. The  way  led,  it  appeared,  to  the  Wells's 
barn,  a  huge,  red  barn  in  the  block,  with  doors 
always  invitingly  open  and  chickens  pecking 
about,  and  doves  on  a  little  platform  close  to 
the  pointed  roof. 

"Aw,  say,  you  ain't  goin'  to  take  'em  along, 


DOLLS  201 

are  you  ?"  demanded  one  knight,  below  his 
voice.  "They'll  spoil  everythinV 

"You're  rescuin'  'em,  you  geezer,"  the  New 
Boy  explained.  "You  got  to  have  'em  along 
till  you  get  'em  rescued,  ain't  you  ?  Arrest 
that  man  !"  he  added.  "Put  him  in  double 
irons  with  chains  and  balls  on.  And  gag  him, 
to  make  sure." 

And  it  was  done,  with  hardly  a  moment's  loss 
of  time. 

We  went  round  by  the  walk  —  a  course  to 
which  the  arrested  one  had  time  to  refer  in 
further  support  of  his  claim  as  to  our  undesir- 
ability.  But  he  was  drowned  in  the  important 
topics  that  were  afoot  :  the  new  cave  to  be 
explored  where  the  Branchetts  were  putting 
a  cellar  under  the  dining-room,  mysterious  boxes 
suspected  to  contain  dynamite  being  unloaded 
into  the  Wells's  cellar,  and  the  Court  of  the 
Seven  Kings,  to  which,  it  seemed,  we  were  being 
conveyed  in  the  red  barn. 

"Shall  we  give  'em  the  password  ?"  the  New 
Boy  asked,  sotto  voce,  as  we  approached  the 
rendezvous.  And  Mary  Elizabeth  and  I 
trembled  as  we  realized  that  he  was  thinking 
of  sharing  the  password  with  us. 


202  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

"Naw!"  cried  the  Arrested  One  violently. 
"It'll  be  all  over  town." 

The  New  Boy  drew  himself  up  —  he  must 
have  been  good  to  look  at,  for  I  recall  his  com- 
pact little  figure  and  his  pink  cheeks. 

"Can't  you  tell  when  you're  gagged?"  he 
inquired  with  majesty.  "You're  play  in'  like 
a  girl  yourself.  I  can  give  the  password  for 
'em,  though,"  he  added  reasonably.  So  we  all 
filed  in  the  red  barn,  to  the  Court  of  the  Seven 
Kings,  and  each  boy  whispered  the  password 
into  the  first  manger,  but  Mary  Elizabeth  and 
I  had  it  whispered  for  us. 

What  the  Court  of  the  Seven  Kings  might 
have  held  for  us  we  were  never  to  know.  At 
that  instant  there  appeared  lumbering  down 
the  alley  a  load  of  hay.  Seated  in  the  midst 
was  a  small  figure  whom  we  recognized  as  Stitchy 
Branchett ;  and  he  rose  and  uttered  a  roar. 

"Come  on,  fellows!"  he  said.  "We  dast 
ride  over  to  the  Glen.  I  was  lookin'  for  you. 
Father  said  so."  And  Stitchy  threw  himself 
on  his  back,  and  lifted  and  waved  his  heels. 

Already  our  liberators  were  swarming  up  the 
hay-rack,  which  had  halted  for  them.  In  a 
twinkling  they  were  sunk  in  that  fragrance, 


DOLLS  203 

kicking  their  heels  even  as  their  host.  Already 
they  had  forgotten  Mary  Elizabeth  and  me, 
nor  did  they  give  us  good-bye. 

We  two  turned  and  went  through  the  Wells's 
yard,  back  to  the  street.  Almost  at  once  we 
were  again  within  range  of  the  sounds  of  Delia, 
practising  interminably  on  her  "At  Home." 

"I  never  rode  on  a  load  of  hay,"  said  Mary 
Elizabeth  at  length. 

Neither  had  I,  though  I  almost  always  walked 
backward  to  watch  one  when  it  passed  me. 

"What  do  you  s'pose  the  password  was  ?" 
said  Mary  Elizabeth. 

It  was  days  before  we  gave  over  wondering. 
And  sometimes  in  later  years  I  have  caught  my- 
self speculating  on  that  lost  word. 

"I  wonder  what  we  were  rescued  from,"  said 
Mary  Elizabeth  when  we  passed  our  woodshed 
door. 

We  stopped  and  peered  within.  No  Lord  of 
Bindyliggs,  though  we  had  almost  expected  to 
see  him  stretched  there,  bound  and  helpless. 

What  were  we  rescued  from  ?  We  should 
never  know. 

We  rounded  the  corner  by  the  side  yard. 
There  sat  our  staring  dolls,  drawn  up  about  the 


204  WHEN  I   WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

tea-table,  static  all.  As  I  looked  at  them  I  was 
seized  and  possessed  by  an  unreasoning  fury. 
And  I  laid  hold  on  Irene  Helena,  and  had  her 
by  the  heels,  and  with  all  my  strength  I  pounded 
her  head  against  the  trunk  of  the  catalpa  tree. 

Mary  Elizabeth  understood  —  when  did  she 
not  understand  ? 

"Which  one  can  I  —  which  one  can  I  ?"  she 
cried  excitedly. 

"All  of  'em  !"  I  shouted,  and  one  after  an- 
other we  picked  up  the  Eleven  by  their  skirts, 
and  we  threw  them  far  and  wide  in  the  grass, 
and  the  penny  dolls  we  hurled  into  the  potato 
patch. 

Then  Mary  Elizabeth  looked  at  me  aghast. 

"Your  dolls!"  she  said. 

"I  don't  care!"  I  cried  savagely.  "I'll 
never  play  'em  again.  I  hate  'em!"  And  I 
turned  to  Mary  Elizabeth  with  new  eyes. 
"Let's  go  down  town  after  supper,"  I  whis- 
pered. 

"I  could,"  she  said,  "but  you  won't  be 
let." 

"I  won't  ask,"  I  said.  "I'll  go.  When  you 
get  done,  come  on  over." 

I  scorned  to  gather  up  the  dolls.     They  were 


DOLLS  205 

in  the  angle  below  the  parlour  windows,  and  no 
one  saw  them.  As  soon  as  supper  was  finished, 
I  went  to  my  room  and  put  on  my  best  shoes, 
which  I  was  not  allowed  to  wear  for  everyday. 
Then  I  tipped  my  birthday  silver  dollar  out  of 
my  bank  and  tied  it  in  the  corner  of  my  hand- 
kerchief. Down  in  the  garden  I  waited  for 
Mary  Elizabeth. 

It  was  hardly  dusk  when  she  came.  We  had 
seen  nothing  of  Delia,  and  we  guessed  that  she 
was  to  stay  in  the  house  for  the  rest  of  the  day 
as  penance  for  having,  without  doubt,  played 
"At  Home  "too  badly. 

"You  better  not  do  it,"  Mary  Elizabeth 
whispered.  "They  might  .  .  ." 

"Come  on,"  I  said  only. 

"Let's  try  a  June  grass,"  she  begged.  "If 
the  seeds  all  come  off  in  my  teeth,  we'll  go. 
But  if  they  don't  — " 

"Come  on,"  said  I,  "I'm  not  going  to  monkey 
with  signs  any  more." 

We  climbed  the  back  fence,  partly  so  that  the 
chain,  weighted  with  a  pail  of  stones,  might 
not  creak,  and  partly  because  to  do  so  seemed 
more  fitting  to  the  business  in  hand.  We  ran 
crouching,  thereby  arousing  the  attention  of 


2o6  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

old  Mr.  Branchett,  who  was  training  a  Virginia 
creeper  along  his  back  fence. 

" Hello,  hello,"  said  he.  "Pretty  good  run- 
ners for  girls,  seems  to  me." 

Neither  of  us  replied.  Our  souls  were  sud- 
denly sickened  at  this  sort  of  dealing. 

Wisconsin  Street  was  a  blaze  of  light.  The 
'buses  were  on  their  way  from  the  "depots" 
to  the  hotels  —  nobody  knew  who  might  be  in 
those  'buses.  They  were  the  nexus  between  us 
and  the  unguessed  world.  Strangers  were  on 
the  streets.  Everything  was  in  motion.  Be- 
fore Morrison's  grocery  they  were  burning  rub- 
bish, some  boys  from  the  other  end  of  town  were 
running  unconcernedly  through  the  flames,  and 
the  smell  of  the  smoke  set  us  tingling.  At  the 
corner  a  man  was  pasting  a  circus  bill  —  we 
stopped  a  moment  to  look  down  the  throat  of 
the  hippopotamus.  Away  up  the  street  a  band 
struck  up,  and  we  took  hold  of  hands  again, 
and  ran. 

We  crossed  the  big  square  by  the  City  Bank, 
under  the  hissing  arc  lamp.  By  the  post-office 
a  crowd  of  men  and  boys  was  standing,  and 
between  the  files  young  women  whom  we  knew, 
wearing  ribbons  and  feathers,  were  passing  in 


DOLLS  207 

and  out  of  the  office  and  laughing.  Bard's 
jewellery  store  was  brilliant  —  it  looked  lighter 
than  any  other  store  with  its  window  of  dazzling 
cut  glass  and  its  wonderful  wall  of  clocks  whose 
pendulums  never  kept  pace.  In  a  saloon  a  piano 
was  playing  —  we  glanced  in  with  a  kind  of 
joyous  fear  at  the  green  screen  beyond  the  door. 
We  saw  Alma  Fremont,  whose  father  kept  a 
grocery  store,  standing  in  the  store  door  with  a 
stick  of  pink  candy  thrust  in  a  lemon,  and  we 
thought  on  the  joy  of  having  a  father  who  was 
a  grocer.  We  longed  to  stare  in  the  barber- 
shop window,  and  looked  away.  But  our  in- 
stinctive destination  was  the  place  before  the 
Opera  House,  where  the  band  was  playing.  We 
reached  it,  and  stood  packed  in  the  crowd,  close 
to  the  blare  of  the  music,  and  shivered  with 
delight. 

"If  only  the  fire-engine  would  come,"  Mary 
Elizabeth  breathed  in  my  ear. 

But  in  a  little  while  the  guffaws,  the  jostling, 
the  proximity  of  dirty  coats,  the  odour  of  stale 
tobacco  must  have  disturbed  us,  because  gradu- 
ally we  edged  a  little  away,  and  stood  on  the 
edge  of  the  crowd,  against  an  iron  rail  outside 
a  billiard  room.  The  band  ceased,  and  went  up 


208  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

into  the  hall.  We  had  a  distinct  impulse  to  do 
the  next  thing.  What  was  there  to  do  next  ? 
What  was  it  that  the  boys  did  when  they  went 
down  town  evenings  ?  What  else  did  they  do 
while  we  were  tidying  our  play-houses  for  the 
night  ?  For  here  we  were,  longing  for  play,  if 
only  we  could  think  what  to  do. 

I  felt  a  hand  beneath  my  chin,  lifting  my  face. 
There,  in  the  press,  stood  my  Father.  Over  his 
arm  he  carried  my  black  jacket  with  the  Bed- 
ford cord. 

"Mother  thought  you  might  be  cold,"  he 
said. 

I  put  on  the  jacket,  and  he  took  Mary  Eliza- 
beth and  me  by  the  hand,  and  we  walked  slowly 
back  down  Wisconsin  Street. 

"We  will  see  Mary  Elizabeth  safely  home 
first,"  my  Father  said,  and  we  accompanied  her 
to  the  New  Family's  door. 

Once  in  our  house,  it  was  I  who  proposed 
going  to  bed,  and  the  suggestion  met  with  no 
opposition.  Upstairs,  I  slipped  the  screen  from 
my  window  and  leaned  out  in  the  dusk.  The 
night,  warm,  fragrant,  significant,  was  inviting 
me  to  belong  to  it,  was  asking  me,  even  as  bright 
day  had  asked  me,  what  it  had  in  common  with 


DOLLS  209 

the  stuffiness  and  dulness  of  forever  watching 
others  do  things.  Something  hard  touched  my 
hand.  It  was  my  birthday  dollar.  It  had  not 
occurred  to  me  to  spend  it. 

I  saw  my  Father  stroll  back  down  the  street, 
lighting  a  cigar.  Below  stairs  I  could  hear  my 
Mother  helping  to  put  away  the  supper  dishes. 
A  dozen  boys  raced  through  the  alley,  just  on 
their  way  down  town.  So  long  as  they  came 
home  at  a  stated  hour  at  night,  and  turned  up 
at  table  with  their  hands  clean,  who  asked  them 
where  they  had  been  ?  "Where  have  you 
been  ?"  they  said  to  me,  the  moment  I  entered 
the  house  —  and  to  Delia  and  Calista  and 
Margaret  Amelia  and  Betty.  We  had  often 
talked  about  it.  And  none  of  us  had  even 
ridden  on  a  load  of  hay.  We  had  a  vague  ex- 
pectation that  it  would  be  different  when  we 
grew  up.  A  sickening  thought  came  to  me : 
Would  it  be  different,  or  was  this  to  be  forever  ? 

I  ran  blindly  down  the  stairs  where  my  Mother 
was  helping  to  put  away  the  supper  dishes  —  in 
the  magic  of  the  night,  helping  to  put  away  the 
supper  dishes. 

"Mother  !"  I  cried,  "Mother  !  Who  made  it 
so  much  harder  to  be  a  girl  ?" 


210  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

She  turned  and  looked  at  me,  her  face  startled, 
and  touched  me  —  I  remember  how  gently  she 
touched  me. 

"Before  you  die,"  she  said,  "it  will  be  easier." 
I  thought  then  that  she  meant  that  I  would 
grow  used  to  it.  Now  I  know  that  she  meant 
what  I  meant  when  I  woke  that  night,  and  re- 
membered my  dolls  lying  out  in  the  grass  and 
the  dew,  and  was  not  sorry,  but  glad :  Glad 
that  the  time  was  almost  come  —  for  real  play- 
things. 


XII 


BIT-BIT 

AT  the  Rodmans',  who  lived  in  a  huge  house 
on  a  hill,  some  of  the  rooms  had  inscriptions  in 
them  —  or  what  I  should  have  called  mottoes 
—  cunningly  lettered  and  set  about.  Some  of 
these  were  in  Margaret  Amelia's  and  Betty's 
room,  above  the  mirror,  the  bed,  the  window; 
and  there  was  one  downstairs  on  a  panel  above 
the  telephone.  The  girls  said  that  they  had 
an  aunt  who  had  written  them  "on  purpose," 
an  aunt  who  had  had  stories  in  print.  In  my 
heart  I  doubted  the  part  about  the  printed 
stories,  and  so  did  Mary  Elizabeth,  but  we  loved 
Margaret  Amelia  and  Betty  too  well  to  let  this 
stand  between  us.  Also,  we  were  caught  by 
the  inscriptions.  They  were  these  : 


FOR   A    CRADLE* 


I  cannot  tell  you  who  I  am 
Nor  what  I'm  going  to  be. 

*  Copyright,  1908,  by  Harper  &  Brothers. 
211 


212  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

You  who  are  wise  and  know  your  ways 
Tell  me. 

FOR   THE    MIRROR 

Look  in  the  deep  of  me.     What  are  we  going  to 

do?  ^ 
If  I  am  I,  as  I  am,  who  in  the  world  are  you  ? 

FOR   AN    IVORY    COMB 

Use  me  and  think  of  spirit,  and  spirit  yet  to  be. 
This  is  the  jest :  Could  soul  touch  soul  if  it  were 
not  for  me  ? 


FOR   THE    DOLL'S    HOUSE 


Girl-doll  would  be  a  little  lamp 

And  shine  like  something  new. 

Boy-doll  would  be  a  telephone 

And  have  the  world  speak  through, 

The  Poet-doll  would  like  to  be 

A  tocsin  with  a  tongue 

To  other  little  dolls  like  bells 

Most  sensitively  rung. 

The  Baby-doll  would  be  a  flower, 

The  Dinah-doll  a  star, 

And  all  —  how  ignominious  ! 

Are  only  what  they  are. 


BIT-BIT  213 

WHERE     THE     BOUGHS     TOUCH     THE     WINDOW 

We  lap  on  the  indoor  shore  —  the  waves  of  the 

leaf  mere, 
We  try  to  tell  you  as  well  as  we  can  :  We  wonder 

what  you  hear  ? 

FOR   ANOTHER   WINDOW 

I  see  the  stones,  I  see  the  stars, 

I  know  not  what  they  be. 

They  always  say  things  to  themselves 

And  now  and  then  to  me. 

But  when  I  try  to  look  between 

Big  stones  and  little  stars, 

I  almost  know  .  .  .  but  what  I  know 

Flies  through  the  window-bars. 

And  downstairs,  on  the  Telephone : 

I,  the  absurdity, 
Proving  what  cannot  be. 
Come,  when  you  talk  with  me 
Does  it  become  you  well 
To  doubt  a  miracle  ? 

We  did  not  understand  all  of  them,  but  we 
liked  them.  And  I  am  sure  now  that  the  in- 
scriptions were  partly  responsible  for  the  fact 


214          WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

that  in  a  little  time,  with  Mary  Elizabeth  and 
me  to  give  them  encouragement,  everything, 
indoors  and  out,  had  something  to  say  to  us. 
These  things  we  did  not  confide  to  the  others, 
not  even  to  Margaret  Amelia  and  Betty  who, 
when  we  stood  still  to  spell  out  the  inscriptions, 
waited  a  respectful  length  of  time  and  then 
plucked  at  our  aprons  and  said :  "Come  on  till 
we  show  you  something,"  which  was  usually 
merely  a  crass  excuse  to  get  us  away. 

So  Mary  Elizabeth  and  I  discovered,  by  com- 
paring notes,  that  at  night  our  Clothes  on  the 
chair  by  the  bed  would  say:  "We  are  so  tired. 
Don't  look  at  us  —  we  feel  so  limp." 

And  the  Night  would  say  :  "What  a  long  time 
the  Day  had  you,  and  how  he  made  you  work. 
Now  rest  and  forget  and  stop  being  you,  till 
morning." 

Sleep  would  say:  "Here  I  come.  Let  me  in 
your  brain  and  I  will  pull  your  eyes  shut,  like 
little  blinds." 

And  in  the  morning  the  Stairs  would  say  : 
"Come  !  We  are  all  here,  stooping,  ready  for 
you  to  step  down  on  our  shoulders." 

Breakfast  would  say:  "Now  I'm  going  to 
be  you  —  now  I'm  going  to  be  you  !  And  I 
have  to  be  cross  or  nice,  just  as  you  are." 


BIT-BIT  215 

Every  fire  that  warmed  us,  every  tree  that 
shaded  us,  every  path  that  we  took,  all  these 
"answered  back"  and  were  familiars.  Every- 
thing spoke  to  us,  save  only  one.  And  this  one 
thing  was  Work.  Our  playthings  in  the  cup- 
board would  talk  to  us  all  day  long  until  the 
moment  that  we  were  told  to  put  them  in  order, 
and  then  instantly  they  all  fell  into  silence. 
Pulling  weeds  in  the  four  o'clock  bed,  straighten- 
ing books,  tidying  the  outdoor  play-house  — 
it  was  always  the  same.  Whatever  we  worked 
at  kept  silent. 

It  was  on  a  June  morning,  when  the  outdoors 
was  so  busy  and  beautiful  that  it  was  like  a 
golden  bee  buried  in  a  golden  rose,  that  I  finally 
refused  outright  to  pick  up  a  brown  sunhat  and 
some  other  things  in  the  middle  of  the  floor. 
Everything  outdoors  and  in  was  smiling  and 
calling,  and  to  do  a  task  was  like  going  to  bed, 
so  far  as  the  joy  of  the  day  was  concerned. 
This  I  could  not  explain,  but  I  said  that  I  would 
not  do  the  task,  and  this  was  high  treason. 

Sitting  in  a  straight-backed  chair  all  alone 
for  half  an  hour  thereafter  —  the  usual  capital 
punishment  —  was  like  cutting  off  the  head  of 
the  beautiful  Hour  that  I  had  meant  to  have. 


216  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

And  I  tried  to  think  it  out.  Why,  in  an  other- 
wise wonderful  world,  did  Work  have  to  come 
and  spoil  everything  ? 

I  do  not  recall  that  I  came  to  any  conclusion. 
How  could  I,  at  a  time  that  was  still  teaching 
the  Hebraic  doctrine  that  work  is  a  curse,  in- 
stead of  the  new  gospel  —  always  dimly  divined 
by  children  before  our  teaching  has  corrupted 
them,  —  that  being  busy  is  being  alive,  and  that 
all  work  may  be  play  if  only  we  are  shown  how 
to  pick  out  the  kind  that  is  play  to  us,  and  that 
doing  nothing  is  a  kind  of  death. 

And  while  I  sat  there  alone  on  that  straight- 
backed  chair,  I  wish  that  I,  as  I  am  now,  might 
have  called  in  Mary  Elizabeth,  whom  I  could 
see  drearily  polishing  the  New  Family's  lamp- 
chimneys,  and  that  I  might  have  told  the  story 
of  Bit-bit. 

Bit-bit,  the  smallest  thing  in  the  world,  sat 
on  the  slipperiest  edge  of  the  highest  mountain 
in  the  farthest  land,  weaving  a  little  garment  of 
sweet-grass.  Then  out  of  the  valley  a  great 
Deev  arose  and  leaned  his  elbows  on  the  highest 
mountain  and  said  what  he  thought  —  which 
is  always  a  dangerous  business. 


"THEN  OUT  OF  THE  VALLEY  A  GREAT  DEEV  AROSE.' 


BIT-BIT  217 

"Bit-bit,"  said  the  Deev,  "how  dare  you 
make  up  my  sweet-grass  so  disgustin'  extrava- 
gant?" 

(It  is  almost  impossible  for  a  Deev  to  say  his 
ing's.) 

"Deevy  dear,"  said  Bit-bit,  without  looking 
up  from  his  work,  "I  have  to  make  a  garment 
to  help  clothe  the  world.  Don't  wrinkle  up  my 
plan.  And  don't  put  your  elbows  on  the  table." 

"About  my  elbows,"  said  the  Deev,  "you  are 
perfectly  right,  though  Deevs  always  do  that 
with  their  elbows.  But  as  to  that  garment," 
he  added,  "I'd  like  to  know  why  you  have  to 
help  clothe  the  world  ?" 

"Deevy  dear,"  said  Bit-bit,  still  not  looking  up 
from  his  work,  "I  have  to  do  so,  because  it's  this 
kind  of  a  world.  Please  don't  wrinkle  up  things." 

"I,"  said  the  Deev,  plainly,  "will  now  show 
you  what  kind  of  a  world  this  really  is.  And 
I  rather  think  I'll  destroy  you  with  a  great 
destruction." 

Then  the  Deev  took  the  highest  mountain 
and  he  tied  its  streams  and  cataracts  together 
to  make  a  harness,  and  he  named  the  mountain 
new,  and  he  drove  it  all  up  and  down  the  earth. 
And  he  cried  behind  it : 


2i8  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

"Ho,  Rhumbthumberland,  steed  of  the 
clouds,  trample  the  world  into  trifles  and  plough 
it  up  for  play.  Bit-bit  is  being  taught  his 
lesson." 

From  dawn  he  did  this  until  the  sky  forgot 
pink  and  remembered  only  blue  and  until  the 
sun  grew  so  hot  that  it  took  even  the  sky's 
attention,  and  the  Deev  himself  was  ready  to 
drop.  And  then  he  pulled  on  the  reins  and 
Rhumbthumberland,  steed  of  the  clouds, 
stopped  trampling  and  let  the  Deev  lean  his 
elbows  on  his  back.  And  there,  right  between 
the  Deev's  elbows,  sat  Bit-bit,  weaving  his 
garment  of  sweet-grass. 

"Thunders  of  spring,"  cried  the  Deev,  "aren't 
you  destroyed  with  a  great  destruction  ?" 

But  Bit-bit  never  looked  up,  he  was  so  busy. 

"Has  anything  happened  ?"  he  asked  politely, 
however,  not  wishing  to  seem  indifferent  to  the 
Deev's  agitation  —  though  secretly,  in  his  little 
head,  he  hated  having  people  plunge  at  him  with 
their  eyebrows  up  and  expect  him  to  act  sur- 
prised too.  When  they  did  that,  it  always  made 
him  savage-calm. 

"The  world  is  trampled  into  trifles  and 
ploughed  up  for  play,"  said  the  exasperated 


BIT-BIT  219 

Deev,  "that's  what's  happened.  How  dare  you 
pay  no  attention  ?" 

"Deevy  dear,"  said  Bit-bit,  still  not  looking 
up  from  his  task,  "I  have  to  work,  whether  it's 
this  kind  of  a  world  or  not.  I  wish  you  wouldn't 
wrinkle  up  things." 

Then  the  Deev's  will  ran  round  and  round  in 
his  own  head  like  a  fly  trying  to  escape  from  a 
dark  hole  —  that  is  the  way  of  the  will  of  all 
Deevs  —  and  pretty  soon  his  will  got  out  and 
went  buzzle-buzzle-buzzle,  which  is  no  proper 
sound  for  anybody's  will  to  make.  And  when 
it  did  that,  the  Deev  went  off  and  got  a  river, 
and  he  climbed  up  on  top  of  Rhumbthumber- 
land  and  he  swung  the  river  about  his  head  like 
a  ribbon  and  then  let  it  fall  from  the  heights 
like  a  lady's  scarf,  and  then  he  held  down  one 
end  with  his  great  boot  and  the  other  end  he 
emptied  into  the  horizon.  From  the  time  of 
the  heat  of  the  sun  he  did  this  until  the  shadows 
were  set  free  from  the  west  and  lengthened 
over  the  land,  shaking  their  long  hair,  and  then 
he  lifted  his  foot  and  let  the  river  slip  and  it 
trailed  off  into  the  horizon  and  flowed  each  way. 

"Now  then !"  said  the  Deev,  disgustingly 
pompous. 


220  WHEN  I   WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

But  when  he  looked  down,  there,  sitting  on 
his  own  great  foot,  high  and  dry  and  pleasant, 
was  Bit-bit,  weaving  his  garment  of  sweet-grass 
and  saying  : 

"Deevy  dear,  a  river  washed  me  up  here  and 
I  was  so  busy  I  didn't  have  time  to  get  down." 

The  Deev  stood  still,  thinking,  and  his 
thoughts  flew  in  and  out  like  birds,  but  always 
they  seemed  to  fly  against  window-panes  in  the 
air,  through  which  there  was  no  passing.  And 
the  Deev  said,  in  his  head : 

"Is  there  nothing  in  this  created  cosmos  that 
will  stop  this  little  scrap  from  working  to  clothe 
the  world  ?  Or  must  I  play  Deev  in  earnest  ?" 

And  that  was  what  he  finally  decided  to  do. 
So  he  said  things  to  his  arms,  and  his  arms  hard- 
ened into  stuff  like  steel,  and  spread  out  like 
mighty  wings.  And  with  these  the  Deev  began 
to  beat  the  air.  And  he  beat  it  and  beat  it 
until  it  frothed.  It  frothed  like  white-of-egg  and 
like  cream  and  like  the  mid-waters  of  torrents, 
frothed  a  mighty  froth,  such  as  I  supposed  could 
never  be.  And  when  the  froth  was  stiff  enough 
to  stand  alone,  the  Deev  took  his  steel-wing 
arm  for  a  ladle,  and  he  began  to  spread  the  froth 
upon  the  earth.  And  he  spread  and  spread  until 


BIT-BIT  221 

the  whole  earth  was  like  an  enormous  chocolate 
cake,  thick  with  white  frosting  —  one  layer, 
two  layers,  three  layers,  disgustingly  extrava- 
gant, so  that  the  little  Deevs,  if  there  had  been 
any,  would  never  have  got  the  dish  scraped. 
Only  there  wasn't  any  dish,  so  they  needn't 
have  minded. 

And  when  he  had  it  all  spread  on,  the  Deev 
stood  up  and  dropped  his  steel  arms  down  — 
and  even  they  were  tired  at  the  elbow,  like  any 
true,  egg-beating  arm  —  and  he  looked  down  at 
the  great  cake  he  had  made.  And  there,  on  the 
top  of  the  frosting,  which  was  already  beginning 
to  harden,  was  sitting  Bit-bit,  weaving  his  gar- 
ment of  sweet-grass  and  talking  about  the 
weather : 

"I  think  there  is  going  to  be  a  storm,"  said 
Bit-bit,  "the  air  around  here  has  been  so  dis- 
gustingly hard  to  breathe." 

Then,  very  absently,  the  Deev  let  the  steel 
out  of  his  arms  and  made  them  get  over  being 
wings,  and,  in  a  place  so  deep  in  his  own  head 
that  nothing  had  ever  been  thought  there  before, 
he  thought: 

"There  is  more  to  this  than  I  ever  knew  there 
is  to  anything." 


222  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

So  he  leaned  over,  all  knee-deep  in  the  frost- 
ing as  he  was,  and  he  said  : 

"Bit-bit,  say  a  great  truth  and  a  real  answer: 
What  is  the  reason  that  my  little  ways  don't 
bother  you  ?  Or  kill  you  ?  Or  keep  you  from 
making  your  garment  of  sweet-grass  ?" 

"Why,"  said  Bit-bit,  in  surprise,  but  never 
looking  up  from  his  work,  "Deevy  dear,  that's 
easy.  I'm  much,  much,  much  too  busy." 

"Scrap  of  a  thing,"  said  the  Deev,  "too  busy 
to  mind  cataracts  and  an  earth  trampled  to 
trifles  and  then  frosted  with  all  the  air  there 
is?" 

"Too  busy,"  assented  Bit-bit,  snapping  off 
his  thread.  "And  now  I  do  hope  you  are  not 
going  to  wrinkle  up  things  any  more." 

"No,"  said  the  Deev,  with  decision,  "I  ain't." 
(Deevs  are  always  ungrammatical  when  you 
take  them  by  surprise.)  And  he  added  very 
shrewdly,  for  he  was  a  keen  Deev  and  if  he  saw 
that  he  could  learn,  he  was  willing  to  learn,  which 
is  three  parts  of  all  wisdom:  "Little  scrap, 
teach  me  to  do  a  witchcraft.  Teach  me  to 
work." 

At  that  Bit-bit  laid  down  his  task  in  a  min- 
ute. 


BIT-BIT  223 

"What  do  you  want  to  make?"  he  asked. 

The  Deev  thought  for  a  moment. 

"I  want  to  make  a  palace  and  a  garden  and  a 
moat  for  me"  said  he.  "I'm  tired  campin' 
around  in  the  air." 

"If  that's  all,"  said  Bit-bit,  "I'm  afraid  I 
can't  help  you.  I  thought  you  wanted  to  work. 
Out  of  all  the  work  there  is  in  the  world  I  should 
think  of  another  one  if  I  were  you,  Deevy." 

"Well,  then,  I  want  to  make  a  golden  court 
dress  for  me,  all  embroidered  and  flowered  and 
buttoned  and  gored  and  spliced,"  said  the  Deev, 
or  whatever  these  things  are  called  in  the  clothing 
of  Deevs  ;  "I  want  to  make  one.  I'm  tired  goin' 
around  in  rompers."  (It  wasn't  rompers,  really, 
but  it  was  what  Deevs  wear  instead,  and  you 
wouldn't  know  the  name,  even  if  I  told  you.) 

"Excuse  me,"  said  Bit-bit,  frankly,  "I  won't 
waste  time  like  that.  Don't  you  want  to  work  ?  " 

"Yes,"  said  the  Deev,  "I  do.  Maybe  I 
don't  know  what  work  is." 

"Maybe  you  don't,"  agreed  Bit-bit.  "But  I 
can  fix  that.  I'm  going  for  a  walk  now,  and 
there's  just  room  for  you.  Come  along." 

So  they  started  off,  and  it  was  good  walking, 
for  by  now  the  sun  had  dried  up  all  the  frosting ; 


224  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

and  the  Deev  trotted  at  Bit-bit's  heels,  and  they 
made  a  very  funny  pair.  So  funny  that  Almost 
Everything  watched  them  go  by,  and  couldn't 
leave  off  watching  them  go  by,  and  so  followed 
them  all  the  way.  Which  was  what  Bit-bit 
had  thought  would  happen.  And  when  he  got  to 
a  good  place,  Bit-bit  stood  still  and  told  the 
Deev  to  turn  round.  And  there  they  were, 
staring  face  to  face  with  Almost  Everything : 
Deserts  and  towns  and  men  and  women  and 
children  and  laws  and  governments  and  railroads 
and  factories  and  forests  and  food  and  drink. 

"There's  your  work,"  said  Bit-bit,  carelessly. 

"Where?"  asked  the  Deev,  just  like  other 
folks. 

"Where?"  repeated  Bit-bit,  nearly  peevish. 
"Look  at  this  desert  that's  come  along  behind 
us.  Why  don't  you  swing  a  river  over  your 
head  —  you  could  do  that,  couldn't  you,  Deevy  ? 
—  and  make  things  grow  on  that  desert,  and 
let  people  live  on  it,  and  turn  'em  into  folks  ? 
Why  don't  you?" 

"It   ain't   amusin'   enough,"   said   the  Deev. 

(Deevs  are  often  ungrammatical  when  they 
don't  take  pains ;  and  this  Deev  wasn't  taking 
any  pains.) 


BIT-BIT  225 

"Well,"  said  Bit-bit,  "then  look  at  this  town 
that  has  come  along  behind  us,  full  of  dirt  and 
disease  and  laziness  and  worse.  Why  don't 
you  harness  up  a  mountain  —  you  could  do 
that,  couldn't  you,  Deevy  ?  —  and  plough  up  the 
earth  and  trample  it  down  and  let  people  live 
as  they  were  meant  to  live,  and  turn  them  into 
folks  ?  Why  don't  you  ?" 

"It  couldn't  be  done  that  way,"  said  the 
Deev,  very  much  excited  and  disgustingly 
certain. 

"Well,"  said  Bit-bit,  "then  look  at  the  men 
and  women  and  children  that  have  come  along 
behind  us.  What  about  them  —  what  about 
them?  Why  don't  you  make  your  arms  steel 
and  act  as  if  you  had  wings,  and  beat  the  world 
into  a  better  place  for  them  to  live,  instead  of 
making  a  cake  of  it.  You  could  do  it,  Deevy  — 
anybody  could  do  that." 

"Yes,"  said  the  Deev,  "I  could  do  that.  But 
it  don't  appeal  to  me." 

(Deevs  are  always  ungrammatical  when  they 
are  being  emphatic,  and  now  the  Deev  was 
being  very  emphatic.  He  was  a  keen  Deev, 
but  he  would  only  learn  what  he  wanted  to 
learn.) 

Q 


226  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

"Deevy  dear"  cried  Bit-bit,  in  distress  be- 
cause the  Deev  was  such  a  disgusting  creature, 
"then  at  least  do  get  some  sweet-grass  and  make 
a  little  garment  to  help  clothe  the  world  ?" 

"What's  the  use?"  said  the  Deev.  "Let 
it  go  naked.  It's  always  been  that  way." 

So,  since  the  Deev  would  not  learn  the  work 
witchcraft,  Bit-bit,  very  sorrowful,  stood  up  and 
said  a  great  truth  and  made  a  real  answer  — 
which  is  always  a  dangerous  business. 

"You  will,  you  will,  you  will  do  these  things," 
he  cried,  "because  it's  that  kind  of  a  world." 

And  then  the  Deev,  who  had  all  along  been 
getting  more  and  more  annoyed,  pieced  together 
his  will  and  his  ideas  and  his  annoyance,  and 
they  all  went  buzzle-buzzle-buzzle  together  till 
they  made  an  act.  And  the  act  was  that  he 
stepped  sidewise  into  space,  and  he  picked  up 
the  earth  and  put  it  between  his  knees,  and  he 
cracked  it  hard  enough  so  that  it  should  have 
fallen  into  uncountable  bits. 

"It's  my  nut,"  said  the  Deev,  "and  now  I'm 
going  to  eat  it  up." 

But  lo,  from  the  old  shell  there  came  out  a  fair 
new  kernel  of  a  world,  so  lustrous  and  lovely 
that  the  Deev  was  blinded  and  hid  his  eyes. 


BIT-BIT  227 

Only  first  he  had  seen  how  the  deserts  were 
flowing  with  rivers  and  the  towns  were  grown 
fair  under  willing  hands  for  men  and  women  and 
children  to  live  there.  And  there,  with  Almost 
Everything,  sat  Bit-bit  in  his  place,  weaving  a 
little  garment  of  sweet-grass  to  clothe  some  mite 
of  the  world. 

"Now  this  time  try  not  to  wrinkle  things  all 
up,  Deev,"  said  Bit-bit.  "I  must  say,  you've 
been  doing  things  disgustingly  inhuman." 

So  after  that  the  Deev  was  left  camping  about 
in  the  air,  trying  to  make  for  himself  new  witch- 
crafts. And  there  he  is  to  this  day,  being  a 
disgusting  creature  generally,  and  only  those 
who  are  as  busy  as  Bit-bit  are  safe  from  him. 


XIII 

WHY 

THERE  was  a  day  when  Mary  Elizabeth 
and  Delia  and  Calista  and  Betty  and  I  sat 
under  the  Eating  Apple  tree  and  had  no  spirit 
to  enter  upon  anything.  Margaret  Amelia  was 
not  with  us,  and  her  absence  left  us  relaxed 
and  without  initiative ;  for  it  was  not  as  if  she 
had  gone  to  the  City,  or  to  have  her  dress 
tried  on,  or  her  hair  washed,  or  as  if  she  were 
absorbed  in  any  real  occupation.  Her  absence 
was  due  to  none  of  these  things.  Margaret 
Amelia  was  in  disgrace.  She  was,  in  fact, 
confined  in  her  room  with  every  expectation 
of  remaining  there  until  supper  time. 

"What'd  she  do?"  we  had  breathlessly 
inquired  of  Betty  when  she  had  appeared  alone 
with  her  tidings. 

"Well,"  replied  Betty,  "it's  her  paper  dolls 
and  her  button-house.  She  always  leaves 
'em  around.  She  set  up  her  button-house 
all  over  the  rug  in  the  parlour  —  you  know, 

228 


WHY  229 

the  rug  that  its  patterns  make  rooms  ?  An' 
she  had  her  paper  dolls  living  in  it.  That  was 
this  morning  —  and  we  forgot  'em.  And  after 
dinner,  while  we're  outdoors,  the  minister 
came.  And  he  walked  into  the  buttons  and 
onto  the  glass  dangler  off  the  lamp  that  we 
used  for  a  folding-doors.  And  he  slid  a  long 
ways  on  it.  And  he  scrushed  it,"  Betty  con- 
cluded resentfully  "And  now  she's  in  her 
room." 

We  pondered  it.  There  was  justice  there, 
we  saw  that.  But  shut  Margaret  Amelia  in  a 
room  !  It  was  as  ignominious  as  caging  a  cap- 
tain. 

"Did  she  cry?"   we  indelicately  demanded. 

"Awful,"  said  Betty.  "  She  wouldn't  of  cared 
if  it  had  only  been  raining,"  she  added. 

We  looked  hard  at  the  sky.  We  should  have 
been  willing  to  have  it  rain  to  make  lighter 
Margaret  Amelia's  durance,  and  sympathy  could 
go  no  further.  But  there  was  not  a  cloud. 

It  was  Mary  Elizabeth  who  questioned  the 
whole  matter. 

"How,"  said  she,  "does  it  do  any  good  to 
shut  her  up  in  her  room  ?" 

We  had  never  thought  of  this.     We  stared 


230  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

wonderingly  at  Mary  Elizabeth.  Being  shut 
in  your  room  was  a  part  of  the  state  of  not 
being  grown  up.  When  you  grew  up,  you  shut 
others  in  their  rooms  or  let  them  out,  as  you 
ruled  the  occasion  to  require.  There  was  Grand- 
mother Beers,  for  instance,  coming  out  the 
door  with  scissors  in  her  hands  and  going  toward 
her  sweet-pea  bed.  Once  she  must  have  shut 
Mother  in  her  room.  Mother ! 

Delia  was  incurably  a  defender  of  things  as 
they  are.  Whenever  I  am  tempted  to  feel  that 
guardians  of  an  out-worn  order  must  know 
better  than  they  seem  to  know,  I  remember 
Delia.  Delia  was  born  reactionary,  even  as 
she  was  born  brunette. 

"Why,"  said  she  with  finality,  "that's  the 
way  they  punish  you." 

Taken  as  a  fact  and  not  as  a  philosophy,  there 
was  no  question  about  this. 

"I  was  shut  in  one  for  pinching  Frankie 
Ames,"  I  acknowledged. 

"I  was  in  one  for  getting  iron-rust  on  my 
skirt,"  said  Calista,  "and  for  being  awful 
cross  when  my  bath  was,  and  for  putting  sugar 
on  the  stove  to  get  the  nice  smell." 

"I  was  in  one  for  telling  a  lie,"  Betty  admitted 


WHY  231 

reluctantly.  "And  Margaret  Amelia  was  in 
one  for  wading  in  the  creek.  She  was  in  a 
downstairs  one.  And  I  took  a  chair  round 
outside  to  help  her  out  —  but  she  wouldn't 
do  it." 

"Pooh  !  I  was  in  one  lots  of  times,"  Delia 
capped  it.  And,  as  usual,  we  looked  at  her  with 
respect  as  having  experiences  far  transcending 
our  own.  "I'll  be  in  one  again  if  I  don't  go 
home  and  take  care  of  my  canary,"  she  added. 
"Mamma  said  I  would." 

"Putting  sugar  on  the  stove  isn't  as  wicked 
as  telling  a  lie,  is  it  ?"  Mary  Elizabeth  inquired. 

We  weighed  it.  On  the  whole,  we  were 
inclined  to  think  that  it  was  not  so  wicked, 
"though,"  Delia  put  in,  "you  do  notice  the 
sugar  more." 

"Why  do  they  shut  you  in  the  same  way 
for  the  different  wickeds  ?"  Mary  Elizabeth 
demanded. 

None  of  us  knew,  but  it  was  Delia  who  had 
the  theory. 

"Well,"  she  said,  "you've  got  to  know  you're 
wicked.  It  don't  make  any  difference  how 
wicked.  Because  you  stop  anyhow." 

"No,    you    don't,"     Betty    said    decidedly, 


232  WHEN   I  WAS   A   LITTLE   GIRL 

"you're  always  getting  a  new  thing  to  be  shut 
in  about.  Before  you  mean  to,"  she  added 
perplexedly. 

Mary  Elizabeth  looked  away  at  Grandmother 
Beers,  snipping  sweet-peas.  Abruptly,  Mary 
Elizabeth  threw  herself  on  the  grass  and  stared 
up  through  the  branches  of  the  Eating  Apple 
tree,  and  then  laid  her  arms  straight  along  her 
sides,  and  began  luxuriously  to  roll  down  a 
little  slope.  The  inquiry  was  too  complex  to 
continue. 

"Let's  go  see  if  the  horse-tail  hair  is  a  snake 
yet,"  she  proposed,  sitting  up  at  the  foot  of  the 
slope. 

"I'll  have  to  do  my  canary,"  said  Delia,  but 
she  sprang  up  with  the  rest  of  us,  and  we  went 
round  to  the  rain-water  barrel. 

The  rain-water  barrel  stood  at  the  corner  of 
the  house,  and  reflected  your  face  most  satis- 
fyingly,  save  that  the  eaves-spout  got  in  the 
way.  Also,  you  always  inadvertently  joggled 
the  side  with  your  knee,  which  set  the  water 
wavering  and  wrinkled  away  the  image.  At 
the  bottom  of  this  barrel  invisibly  rested  sundry 
little  "doll"  pie-tins  of  clay,  a  bottle,  a  broken 
window-catch,  a  stray  key,  and  the  bowl  of  a 


WHY  233 

soap-bubble  pipe,  cast  in  at  odd  intervals,  for 
no  reason.  There  were  a  penny  doll  and  a  mar- 
ble down  there  too,  thrown  in  for  sheer  bravado 
and  bitterly  regretted. 

Into  this  dark  water  there  had  now  been 
dropped,  two  days  ago,  a  long  black  hair  from 
the  tail  of  Mr.  Branchett's  horse,  Fanny. 
We  had  been  credibly  informed  that  if  you 
did  this  to  a  hair  from  a  horse's  tail  and  left 
it  untouched  for  twenty-four  hours  or,  to  be 
perfectly  safe,  for  forty-eight  hours,  the  result 
would  inevitably  be  a  black  snake.  We  had 
gone  to  the  Branchetts'  barn  for  the  raw  material 
and,  finding  none  available  on  the  floor,  we  were 
about  to  risk  jerking  it  from  the  source  when 
Delia  had  perceived  what  we  needed  caught 
in  a  crack  of  the  stall.  We  had  abstracted  the 
hair,  and  duly  immersed  it.  Why  we  wished 
to  create  a  black  snake,  or  what  we  purposed 
doing  with  him  when  we  got  him  created,  I 
cannot  now  recall.  I  believe  the  intention 
to  have  been  primarily  to  see  whether  or  not 
they  had  told  us  the  truth  —  "they"  standing 
for  the  universe  at  large.  For  my  part,  I  was 
still  smarting  from  having  been  detected  sitting 
in  patience  with  a  handful  of  salt,  by  the  mouse- 


234  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

hole  in  the  shed,  in  pursuance  of  another  recipe 
which  I  had  picked  up  and  trusted.  Now  if 
this  new  test  failed.  .  .  . 

We  got  an  old  axe-handle  from  the  barn 
wherewith  to  probe  the  water.  If,  however, 
the  black  snake  were  indeed  down  there,  our 
weapon,  offensive  and  defensive,  would  hardly 
be  long  enough ;  so  we  substituted  the  clothes- 
prop.  Then  we  drew  cuts  to  see  who  should 
wield  it,  and  the  lot  fell  to  Betty.  Gentle 
little  Betty  turned  quite  pale  with  the  respon- 
sibility, but  she  resolutely  seized  the  clothes- 
prop,  and  Delia  stood  behind  her  with  the 
axe-handle. 

"Now  if  he  comes  out,"  said  Betty,  "run 
for  your  lives.  He  might  be  a  blue  racer." 

None  of  us  knew  what  a  blue  racer  might  be, 
but  we  had  always  heard  of  it  as  the  fastest  of 
all  the  creatures.  A  black  snake,  it  seemed, 
might  easily  be  a  blue  racer.  As  Betty  raised 
the  clothes-prop,  I,  who  had  instigated  the  ex- 
periment, weakened. 

"Maybe  he  won't  be  ready  yet,"  I  conceded. 

"  If  he  isn't  there,  I'll  never  believe  anything 
anybody  tells  me  again  —  ever,"  said  Delia 
firmly. 


WHY  235 

The  clothes-prop  Betty  plunged  to  the 
bottom,  and  lifted.  No  struggling  black  shape 
writhed  about  it.  She  repeated  the  move- 
ment, and  this  time  we  all  cried  out,  for  she 
brought  up  the  dark  discoloured  rag  of  a 
sash  of  the  penny  doll,  the  penny  doll  clinging 
to  it  and  immediately  dropping  sullenly  back 
again.  Grown  brave,  Betty  stirred  the  water, 
and  Delia,  advancing,  did  the  same  with  her 
axe-handle.  Again  and  again  these  were  lifted, 
revealing  nothing.  At  last  we  faced  it :  No 
snake  was  there. 

"So  that's  a  lie,  too,"  said  Delia,  brutally. 

We  stared  at  one  another.  I,  as  the  one 
chiefly  disappointed,  looked  away.  I  looked 
down  the  street :  Mr.  Branchett  was  hoeing 
in  his  garden.  Delivery  wagons  were  rattling 
by.  The  butter-man  came  whistling  round  the 
house.  Everybody  seemed  so  busy  and  so 
sure.  They  looked  as  if  they  knew  why  every- 
thing was.  And  to  us,  truth  and  justice  and 
reason  and  the  results  to  be  expected  in  this 
grown-up  world  were  all  a  confusion  and  a 
thorn. 

As  we  went  round  the  house,  talking  of  what 
had  happened,  our  eyes  were  caught  by  a  pic- 


236  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

ture  which  should  have  been,  and  was  not, 
of  quite  casual  and  domestic  import.  On  the 
side-porch  of  Delia's  house  appeared  her  mother, 
hanging  out  Delia's  canary. 

"Good-bye,"  said  Delia,  briefly,  and  fared  from 
us,  running. 

We  lingered  for  a  little  in  the  front  yard.  In 
five  minutes  the  curtains  in  Delia's  room  stirred, 
and  we  saw  her  face  appear,  and  vanish.  She 
had  not  waved  to  us --there  was  no  need. 
It  had  overtaken  her.  She,  too,  was  "in  her 


room.'1 


Delicacy  dictated  that  we  withdraw  from 
sight,  and  we  returned  to  the  back  yard.  As 
we  went,  Mary  Elizabeth  was  asking : 

"Is  telling  a  lie  and  not  feeding  your  canary 
as  wicked  as  each  other  ?" 

It  seemed  incredible,  and  we  said  so. 

"Well,  you  get  shut  up  just  as  hard  for  both 
of  'em,"  Mary  Elizabeth  reminded  us. 

"Then  I  don't  believe  any  of  'em's  wicked," 
said  I,  flatly.  On  which  we  came  back  to  the 
garden  and  met  Grandmother  Beers,  with  a 
great  bunch  of  sweet-peas  in  her  hand,  coming 
to  the  house. 

"Wicked?"     she  said,   in   her  way  of   soft 


WHY  237 

surprise.  "I  didn't  know  you  knew  such  a 
word." 

"It's  a  word  you  learn  at  Sunday  school," 
I  explained  importantly. 

"Come  over  here  and  tell  me  about  it,"  she 
invited,  and  led  the  way  toward  the  Eating 
Apple  tree.  And  she  sat  down  in  the  swing  ! 
Of  course  whatever  difference  of  condition 
exists  between  your  grandmother  and  your- 
self vanishes  when  she  sits  down  casually  in 
your  swing. 

My  Grandmother  Beers  was  a  little  woman, 
whose  years,  in  England,  in  "New  York  state," 
and  in  her  adopted  Middle  West,  had  brought 
her  only  peace  within,  though  much  had  beset 
her  from  without.  She  loved  Four-o'clocks, 
and  royal  purple.  When  she  said  "royal  pur- 
ple," it  was  as  if  the  words  were  queens.  She 
was  among  the  few  who  sympathized  with  my 
longing  to  own  a  blue  or  red  or  green  jar  from 
a  drug  store  window.  We  had  first  understood 
each  other  in  a  matter  of  window-sill  food : 
This  would  be  a  crust,  or  a  bit  of  baked  apple, 
or  a  cracker  which  I  used  to  lay  behind  the 
dining-room  window-shutter  —  the  closed  one. 
For  in  the  house  at  evening  it  was  warm  and 


238  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

light  and  Just-had-your-supper,  while  outside 
it  was  dark  and  damp  and  big,  and  I  conceived 
that  it  must  be  lonely  and  hungry.  The  Dark 
was  like  a  great  helpless  something,  filling  the 
air  and  not  wanting  particularly  to  be  there. 
Surely  It  would  much  rather  be  light,  with 
voices  and  three  meals,  than  the  Dark,  with 
nobody  and  no  food.  So  I  used  to  set  out  a 
little  offering,  and  once  my  Grandmother  Beers 
had  caught  me  paying  tribute. 

"Once  something  did  come  and  get  it,"  I 
defended  myself  over  my  shoulder,  and  before 
she  could  say  a  word. 

"Likely  enough,  likely  enough,  child,"  she 
assented,  and  did  not  chide  me. 

Neither  did  she  chide  me  when  once  she 
surprised  me  into  mentioning  the  Little  Things, 
who  had  the  use  of  my  playthings  when  I  was 
not  there.  It  was  one  dusk  when  she  had  come 
upon  me  setting  my  toy  cupboard  to  rights, 
and  had  commended  me.  And  I  had  explained 
that  it  was  so  the  Little  Things  could  find  the 
toys  when  they  came,  that  night  and  every 
night,  to  play  with  them.  I  remember  that  all 
she  did  was  to  squeeze  my  hand ;  but  I  felt  that 
I  was  wholly  understood. 


WHY  239 

What  child  of  us  —  of  Us  Who  Were  —  will 
ever  forget  the  joy  of  having  an  older  one  enter 
into  our  games  ?  I  used  to  sit  in  church  and 
tell  off  the  grown  folk  by  this  possibility  in 
them  —  "  She'd  play  with  you  —  she  wouldn't 
—  she  would  —  he  would  —  they  wouldn't"  — 
an  ancient  declension  of  the  human  race,  per- 
fectly recognized  by  children,  but  never  given 
its  proper  due.  ...  I  shall  never  forget 
the  out-door  romps  with  my  Father,  when  he 
stooped,  with  his  hands  on  his  knees,  and  then 
ran  at  me ;  or  when  he  held  me  while  I  walked 
the  picket  fence ;  or  set  me  in  the  Eating  Apple 
tree ;  nor  can  I  forget  the  delight  of  the  play- 
house that  he  built  for  me,  with  a  shelf  around. 
.  .  .  And  always  I  shall  remember,  too, 
how  my  Mother  would  play  "Lost."  We  used 
to  curl  on  the  sofa,  taking  with  us  some  small 
store  of  fruit  and  cookies,  wrap  up  in  blankets 
and  shawls,  put  up  an  umbrella  —  possibly  two 
of  them  —  and  there  we  were,  lost  in  the  deep 
woods.  We  had  been  crossing  the  forest  — 
night  had  overtaken  us  —  we  had  climbed  in  a 
thick-leaved  tree  —  it  was  raining  —  the  woods 
were  infested  by  bears  and  wolves  —  we  had  a 
little  food,  possibly  enough  to  stave  off  starva- 


240  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

tion  till  daylight.  Then  came  by  the  beasts 
of  the  forest,  wonderful,  human  beasts,  who 
passed  at  the  foot  of  our  tree,  and  with  whom 
we  talked  long  and  friendly  —  and  differently 
for  each  one  —  and  ended  by  sharing  with  them 
our  food.  We  scraped  acquaintance  with  birds 
in  neighbouring  nests,  the  stars  were  only  across 
a  street  of  sky,  the  Dark  did  its  part  by  hiding 
us.  Sometimes,  yet,  when  I  see  a  fat,  idle 
sofa  in,  say,  an  hotel  corridor,  I  cannot  help 
thinking  as  I  pass:  "What  a  wonderful  place 
to  play  Lost."  I  daresay  that  some  day 
I  shall  put  up  my  umbrella  and  sit  down  and 
play  it. 

Well  —  Grandmother  Beers  was  one  who  knew 
how  to  play  with  us,  and  I  was  always  half 
expecting  her  to  propose  a  new  game.  But 
that  day,  as  she  sat  in  the  swing,  her  eyes  were 
not  twinkling  at  the  corners. 

"What  does  it  mean  ?"  she  asked  us. 
"What  does  'wicked'  mean?" 

"It's  what  you  aren't  to  be,"  I  took  the 
brunt  of  the  reply,  because  I  was  the  relative  of 
the  questioner. 

"Why  not  ?"  asked  Grandmother. 

Why    not  ?     Oh,    we    all    knew    that.     We 


WHY  241 

responded  instantly,  and  out  came  the  results 
of  the  training  of  all  the  families. 

"Because  your  mother  and  father  say  you 
can't,"  said  Betty  Rodman. 

"Because  it  makes  your  mother  feel  bad," 
said  Calista. 

"Because   God   don't   want   us    to,"    said   I. 

"Delia  says,"  Betty  added,  "it's  because,  if 
you  are,  when  you  grow  up  people  won't  think 
anything  of  you." 

Grandmother  Beers  held  her  sweet-peas  to 
her  face. 

"If,"  she  said  after  a  moment,  "you  wanted 
to  do  something  wicked  more  than  you  ever 
wanted  to  do  anything  in  the  world  —  as  much 
as  you'd  want  a  drink  to-morrow  if  you  hadn't 
had  one  to-day  —  and  if  nobody  ever  knew  — 
would  any  of  those  reasons  keep  you  from  doing 
it?" 

We  consulted  one  another's  look,  and  shifted. 
We  knew  how  thirsty  that  would  be.  Already 
we  were  thirsty,  in  thinking  about  it. 

"If  I  were  in  your  places,"  Grandmother  said, 
"I'm  not  sure  those  reasons  would  keep  me.  I 
rather  think  they  wouldn't,  —  always." 

We  stared  at  her.     It  was  true  that  they  didn't 


242  WHEN   I  WAS   A  LITTLE   GIRL 

always  keep  us.  Were  not  two  of  us  "in  our 
rooms"  even  now? 

Grandmother  leaned  forward  —  I  know  how 
the  shadows  of  the  apple  leaves  fell  on  her 
black  lace  cap  and  how  the  pink  sweet-peas 
were  reflected  in  her  delicate  face. 

"Suppose,"  she  said,  "that  instead  of  any 
of  those  reasons,  somebody  gave  you  this 
reason :  That  the  earth  is  a  great  flower  —  a 
flower  that  has  never  really  blossomed  yet. 
And  that  when  it  blossoms,  life  is  going  to  be 
more  beautiful  than  we  have  ever  dreamed, 
or  than  fairy  stories  have  ever  pretended.  And 
suppose  our  doing  one  way,  and  not  another, 
makes  the  flower  come  a  little  nearer  to  blos- 
soming. But  our  doing  the  other  way  puts 
back  the  time  when  it  can  blossom.  Then 
which  would  you  want  to  do  ?" 

Oh,  make  it  grow,  make  it  grow,  we  all  cried  — 
and  I  felt  a  secret  relief:  Grandmother  was 
playing  a  game  with  us,  after  all. 

"And  suppose  that  everything  made  a  dif- 
ference to  it,"  she  went  on,  "every  little  thing  — 
from  telling  a  lie,  on  down  to  going  to  get  a 
drink  for  somebody  and  drinking  first  yourself 
out  in  the  kitchen.  Suppose  that  everything 


WHY  243 

made  a  difference,  from  hurting  somebody  on 
purpose,  down  to  making  up  the  bed  and  pulling 
the  bed-spread  tight  so  that  the  wrinkles  in  the 
blanket  won't  show.  .  .  ." 

At  this  we  looked  at  one  another  in  some  con- 
sternation. How  did  Grandmother  know.  .  .  . 

"Until  after  a  while,"  she  said,  "you  should 
find  out  that  everything  —  loving,  going  to 
school,  playing,  working,  bathing,  sleeping,  were 
all  just  to  make  this  flower  grow.  Wouldn't 
it  be  fun  to  help  ?" 

Yes.  Oh,  yes,  we  were  all  agreed  about  that. 
It  would  be  great  fun  to  help. 

"Well,  then  suppose,"  said  Grandmother, 
"that  as  you  helped,  you  found  out  something 
else :  That  in  each  of  you,  say,  where  your 
heart  is,  or  where  your  breath  is,  there  was  a 
flower  trying  to  blossom  too !  And  that  only 
as  you  helped  the  earth  flower  to  blossom  could 
your  flower  blossom.  And  that  your  doing  one 
way  would  make  your  flower  droop  its  head  and 
grow  dark  and  shrivel  up.  But  your  doing  the 
other  way  would  make  it  grow,  and  turn  beauti- 
ful colours  —  so  that  bye  and  bye  every  one  of 
your  bodies  would  be  just  a  sheath  for  this  flower. 
Which  way  then  would  you  rather  do  ? " 


244  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

Oh,  make  it  grow,  make  it  grow,  we  said 
again. 

And  Mary  Elizabeth  added  longingly  :  — 

"Wouldn't  it  be  fun  if  it  was  true  ?" 

"It  is  true,"  said  Grandmother  Beers. 

She  sat  there,  softly  smiling  over  her  pink 
sweet-peas.  We  looked  at  her  silently.  Then 
I  remembered  that  her  face  had  always  seemed 
to  me  to  be  somehow  light  within.  Maybe  it 
was  her  flower  showing  through  ! 

"Grandmother!"  I  cried,  "is  it  true  —  is 
it  true?" 

"It  is  true,"  she  repeated.  "And  whether 
the  earth  flower  and  other  people's  flowers  and 
your  flower  are  to  bloom  or  not  is  what  living 
is  about.  And  everything  makes  a  difference. 
Isn't  that  a  good  reason  for  not  being  'wicked'  ?" 

We  all  looked  up  in  her  face,  something  in  us 
leaping  and  answering  to  what  she  said.  And  I 
know  that  we  understood. 

"Oh,"  Mary  Elizabeth  whispered  presently 
to  Betty,  "hurry  home  and  tell  Margaret 
Amelia.  It'll  make  it  so  much  easier  when  she 
comes  out  to  her  supper." 

That  night,  on  the  porch  alone  with  Mother 


WHY  245 

and  Father,  I  inquired  into  something  that  still 
was  not  clear. 

"But  how  can  you  tell  which  things  are 
wicked  ?  And  which  ones  are  wrong  and  which 
things  are  right  ?" 

Father  put  out  his  hand  and  touched  my  hand. 
He  was  looking  at  me  with  a  look  that  I  knew  — 
and  his  smile  for  me  is  like  no  other  smile  that 
I  have  ever  known. 

"Something  will  tell  you,"  he  said,  "always." 

"Always?"  I  doubted. 

"Always,"  he  said.  "There  will  be  other 
voices.  But  if  you  listen,  something  will  tell 
you  always.  And  it  is  all  you  need." 

I  looked  at  Mother.  And  by  her  nod  and  her 
quiet  look  I  perceived  that  all  this  had  been 
known  about  for  a  long  time. 

"That  is  why  Grandma  Bard  is  coming  to 
live  with  us,"  she  said,  "not  just  because  we 
wanted  her,  but  because  —  that  said  so." 

In  us  all  a  flower  —  and  something  saying 
something !  And  the  earth  flower  trying  to 
blossom.  ...  I  looked  down  the  street:  At 
Mr.  Branchett  walking  in  his  garden,  at  the 
lights  shining  from  windows,  at  the  folk  saunter- 
ing on  the  sidewalk,  and  toward  town  where 


246  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

the  band  was  playing.  We  all  knew  about 
this  together  then.  This  was  why  everything 
was  !  And  there  were  years  and  years  to  make 
it  come  true. 

What  if  I,  alone  among  them  all,  had  never 
found  out  ? 


XIV 

KING 

THERE  was  a  certain  white  sugar  bear  and  a 
red  candy  strawberry  which  we  had  been  charged 
not  to  eat,  because  the  strawberry  was  a  name- 
less scarlet  and  the  bear,  left  from  Christmas, 
was  a  very  soiled  bear.  We  had  all  looked  at 
these  two  things  longingly,  had  even  on  occasion 
nibbled  them  a  bit.  There  came  a  day  when  I 
crept  under  my  bed  and  ate  them  both. 

It  was  a  bed  with  slats.  In  the  slat  immedi- 
ately above  my  head  there  was  a  knot-hole. 
Knot-hole,  slat,  the  pattern  of  the  ticking  on 
the  mattress,  all  remain  graven  on  the  moment. 
It  was  the  first  time  that  I  had  actually  been 
conscious  of  —  indeed,  had  almost  heard  —  the 
fighting  going  on  within  me. 

Something  was  saying:  "Oh,  eat  it,  eat  it. 
What  do  you  care  ?  It  won't  kill  you.  It  may 
not  even  make  you  sick.  It  is  good.  Eat  it." 

And  something  else,  something  gentle,  in- 
sistent, steady,  kept  saying  over  and  over  in 

247 


248  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

exactly  the  same  tone,  and  so  that  I  did  not  know 
whether  the  warning  came  from  within  or  with- 
out :  — 

"It  must  not  be  eaten.  It  must  not  be  eaten. 
It  must  not  be  eaten." 

But  after  a  little,  as  I  ate,  this  voice  ceased. 

Nobody  knew  that  I  had  eaten  the  forbidden 
bear  and  strawberry.  Grandmother  Beers 
squeezed  my  hand  just  the  same.  Mother  was 
as  tender  as  always.  And  Father — his  kind  eyes 
and  some  little  jest  with  me  were  almost  more 
than  I  could  bear.  I  remember  spending  the 
evening  near  them,  with  something  sore  about  the 
whole  time.  From  the  moment  that  it  began  to 
get  dark  the  presence  of  bear  and  strawberry 
came  and  fastened  themselves  upon  me,  so  that 
I  delayed  bed-going  even  more  than  usual,  and 
interminably  prolonged  undressing. 

Then  there  came  the  moment  when  Mother 
sat  beside  me. 

"Don't  ask  God  for  anything,"  she  always 
said  to  me.  "Just  shut  your  eyes  and  think  of 
his  lovingness  being  here,  close,  close,  close  — 
breathing  with  you  like  your  breath.  Don't 
ask  him  for  anything." 

But  that  night  I  scrambled  into  bed. 


KING  249 

"Not  to-night,  Mother,"  I  said. 

She  never  said  anything  when  I  said  that. 
She  kissed  me  and  went  away. 

Then  ! 

There  I  was,  face  to  face  with  it  at  last.  What 
was  it  that  had  told  me  to  eat  the  bear  and  the 
strawberry  ?  What  was  it  that  had  told  me 
that  these  must  not  be  eaten  ?  What  had  made 
me  obey  one  and  not  the  other  ?  Who  was  it 
that  spoke  to  me  like  that  ? 

I  shut  my  eyes  and  thought  of  the  voice  that 
had  told  me  to  eat,  and  it  felt  like  the  sore  feel- 
ing in  me  and  like  the  lump  in  my  throat,  and 
like  unhappiness. 

I  thought  of  the  other  gentle  voice  that  had 
spoken  and  had  kept  speaking  and  at  last  had 
gone  away  —  and  suddenly,  with  my  eyes  shut, 
I  was  thinking  of  something  like  lovingness, 
close,  close,  breathing  with  me  like  my  breath. 

So  now  I  have  made  a  story  for  that  night. 
It  is  late,  I  know.  But  perhaps  it  is  not  too  late. 

Once  upon  a  time  a  beautiful  present  was  given 
to  a  little  boy  named  Hazen.  It  was  not  a  tent 
or  a  launch  or  a  tree-top  house  or  a  pretend 
aeroplane,  but  it  was  a  little  glass  casket.  And 


250          WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

it  was  the  most  wonderful  little  casket  of  all  the 
kinds  of  caskets  that  there  are. 

For  in  the  casket  was  a  little  live  thing,  some- 
what like  a  fairy  and  somewhat  like  a  spirit,  and 
so  beautiful  that  everyone  wanted  one  too. 

Now  the  little  fairy  (that  was  like  a  spirit) 
was  held  fast  in  the  casket,  which  was  tightly 
sealed.  And  when  the  casket  was  given  to 
Hazen,  the  Giver  said  :  — 

"Hazen  dear,  until  you  get  that  little  spirit 
free,  you  cannot  be  wise  or  really  good  or  loved 
or  beautiful.  But  after  you  get  her  free  you 
shall  be  all  four.  And  nobody  can  free  her  but 
you  yourself,  though  you  may  ask  anybody 
and  everybody  to  tell  you  how." 

Now  Hazen's  father  was  a  king.  And  it 
chanced  that  while  Hazen  was  yet  a  little  boy, 
the  king  of  a  neighbour  country  came  and  took 
Hazen's  father's  kingdom,  and  killed  all  the 
court  —  for  that  was  the  way  neighbour  coun- 
tries did  in  those  days,  not  knowing  that  neigh- 
bours are  nearly  one's  own  family.  They  took 
little  Hazen  prisoner  and  carried  him  to  the 
conquering  king's  court,  and  they  did  it  in  such 
a  hurry  that  he  had  not  time  to  take  anything 
with  him.  All  his  belongings  —  his  tops,  his 


KING  251 

football,  his  books,  and  his  bank,  had  to  be  left 
behind,  and  among  the  things  that  were  left 
was  Hazen's  little  glass  casket,  forgotten  on  a 
closet  shelf,  upstairs  in  the  castle.  And  the 
castle  was  shut  up  and  left  as  it  was,  because  the 
conquering  king  thought  that  maybe  he  might  like 
sometime  to  give  to  his  little  daughter,  the  Prin- 
cess Vista,  this  castle,  which  stood  on  the  very 
summit  of  a  sovereign  mountain  and  commanded 
a  great  deal  of  the  world. 

In  the  court  of  the  conquering  king  poor  little 
Hazen  grew  up,  and  he  was  not  wise  or  really 
good  or  loved  or  beautiful,  and  he  forgot  about 
the  casket  or  thought  of  it  only  as  a  dream,  and 
he  did  not  know  that  he  was  a  prince.  He  was  a 
poor  little  furnace  boy  and  kitchen-fire  builder  in 
the  king's  palace,  and  he  slept  in  the  basement  and 
did  nothing  from  morning  till  night  but  attend  to 
drafts  and  dampers.  He  did  not  see  the  king  at 
all,  and  he  had  never  even  caught  a  glimpse  of 
the  king's  little  daughter,  the  Princess  Vista. 

One  morning  before  daylight  Hazen  was 
awakened  by  the  alarm-in-a-basin  at  the  head 
of  his  cot  —  for  he  was  always  so  tired  that  just 
an  alarm  never  wakened  him  at  all,  but  set  in 


252  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

a  brazen  basin  an  alarm  would  waken  anybody. 
He  dressed  and  hurried  through  the  long,  dim 
passages  that  led  to  the  kitchens,  and  there  he 
kindled  the  fires  and  tended  the  drafts  and  shov- 
elled the  coal  that  should  cook  the  king's  break- 
fast. 

Suddenly  a  Thought  spoke  to  him.     It  said  :  — 

"Hazen,  you  are  not  wise,  or  really  good,  or 
loved,  or  beautiful.  Why  don't  you  become 
so?" 

"I,"  Hazen  thought  back  sadly,  "/  become 
these  things  ?  Impossible  !"  and  he  went  on 
shovelling  coal. 

But  still  the  Thought  spoke  to  him,  and  said 
the  same  thing  over  and  over  so  many  times  that 
at  last  he  was  obliged  to  listen  and  even  to  an- 
swer. 

"What  would  I  do  to  be  like  that  ?"  he  asked 
almost  impatiently. 

"First  go  up  in  the  king's  library,"  said  the 
Thought. 

So  when  the  fires  were  roaring  and  the  dampers 
were  right,  Hazen  went  softly  up  the  stair  and 
through  the  quiet  lower  rooms  of  the  palace, 
for  it  was  very  early  in  the  morning,  and  no 
one  was  stirring.  Hazen  had  been  so  seldom 


KING  253 

above  stairs  that  he  did  not  even  know  where 
the  library  was  and  by  mistake  he  opened  suc- 
cessively the  doors  to  the  great  banquet  roomj 
the  state  drawing  rooms,  a  morning  room,  and 
even  the  king's  audience  chamber  before  at 
last  he  chanced  on  the  door  of  the  library. 

The  king's  library  was  a  room  as  wide  as  a 
lawn  and  as  high  as  a  tree,  and  it  was  filled  with 
books,  and  the  shelves  were  thrown  out  to  make 
alcoves,  so  that  the  books  were  as  thick  as  leaves 
on  branches,  and  the  whole  room  was  pleasant, 
like  something  good  to  do.  It  was  impossible 
for  little  Hazen,  furnace  boy  though  he  was,  to 
be  in  that  great  place  of  books  without  taking 
one  down.  So  he  took  at  random  a  big  leather 
book  with  a  picture  on  the  cover,  and  he  went 
toward  a  deep  window-seat. 

Nothing  could  have  exceeded  his  surprise  and 
terror  when  he  perceived  the  window-seat  to  be 
occupied.  And  nothing  could  have  exceeded  his 
wonder  and  delight  when  he  saw  who  occupied 
it.  She  was  a  little  girl  of  barely  his  own  age, 
and  her  lovely  waving  hair  fell  over  her  soft 
blue  gown  from  which  her  little  blue  slippers 
were  peeping.  She,  too,  had  a  great  book  in 
her  arms,  and  over  the  top  of  this  she  was 


254  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

looking  straight  at  Hazen  in  extreme  disap- 
proval. 

"Will  you  have  the  goodness,"  she  said  — 
speaking  very  slowly  and  most  freezing  cold  — 
"to  'splain  what  you  are  doing  in  my  father's 
library?" 

At  these  words  Hazen's  little  knees  should 
have  shaken,  for  he  understood  that  this  was 
the  Princess  Vista  herself.  But  instead,  he 
was  so  possessed  by  the  beauty  and  charm  of  the 
little  princess  that  there  was  no  room  for  fear. 
Though  he  had  never  in  his  life  been  taught  to 
bow,  yet  the  blood  of  his  father  the  king,  and 
of  his  father  the  king,  and  of  his  father  the  king, 
and  so  on,  over  and  over,  stirred  in  him  and  he 
bowed  like  the  prince  he  was-but-didn't-know-it. 

"Oh,  princess,"  he  said,  "I  want  to  be  wise 
and  really  good  and  loved  and  beautiful,  and 
I  have  come  to  the  king's  library  to  find  out  how 
to  do  it." 

"Who  are  you,  that  want  so  many  'surd 
things  ?"  asked  the  princess,  curiously. 

"I  am  the  furnace  boy,"  said  the  poor  prince, 
"and  my  other  name  is  Hazen." 

At  this  the  princess  laughed  aloud  —  for  when 
he  had  bowed  she  had  fancied  that  he  might  be 


KING  255 

at  least  the  servant  to  some  nobleman  at  the 
court,  too  poor  to  keep  his  foot-page  in  livery. 

"The  furnace  boy  indeed  !"  she  cried.  "And 
handling  my  father's  books.  If  you  had  what 
you  'serve,  you'd  be  put  in  pwison." 

At  that  Hazen  bowed  again  very  sadly,  and 
was  about  to  put  back  his  book  when  footsteps 
sounded  in  the  hall,  and  nursery  governesses 
and  chamberlains  and  foot-pages  and  lackeys 
and  many  whose  names  are  as  dust  came  run- 
ning down  the  stairs,  all  looking  for  the  prin- 
cess. And  the  princess,  who  was  not  frightened, 
was  suddenly  sorry  for  little  Hazen,  who  was. 

"Listen,"  she  said,  "you  bow  so  nicely  that 
you  may  hide  in  that  alcove  and  I  will  not  tell 
them  that  you  are  there.  But  don't  you  come 
here  to-morrow  morning  when  I  come  to  read 
my  book,  or  I  can't  tell  what  will  happen." 

Hazen  had  just  time  to  slip  in  the  alcove  when 
all  the  nursery  governesses,  chamberlains,  foot- 
pages,  and  thpse  whose  names  are  as  dust  burst 
in  the  room. 

"I  was  just  coming,"  said  the  princess, 
haughtily. 

But  when  she  was  gone,  Hazen,  in  his  safe 
alcove,  did  not  once  look  at  his  big  leather  book. 


256  WHEN  I  WAS  A   LITTLE  GIRL 

He  did  not  even  open  it.  Instead  he  sat  staring 
at  the  floor,  and  thinking  and  thinking  and  think- 
ing of  the  princess.  And  it  was  as  if  his  mind 
were  opened,  and  as  if  all  the  princess  thoughts 
in  the  world  were  running  in,  one  after  another. 

Presently,  when  it  was  time  for  the  palace 
to  be  awake,  he  stirred  and  rose  and  returned  the 
book  to  its  place,  and  in  the  midst  of  his  princess 
thoughts  he  found  himself  face  to  face  with  a 
great  mirror.  And  there  he  saw  that,  not  only 
was  he  not  beautiful,  but  that  his  cheek  and  his 
clothes  were  all  blackened  from  the  coal.  And 
then  he  thought  that  he  would  die  of  shame ; 
first,  because  the  princess  had  seen  him  looking 
so,  and  second,  because  he  looked  so,  whether 
she  had  seen  him  or  not. 

He  went  back  to  the  palace  kitchen,  and 
waited  only  to  turn  off  the  biggest  drafts  and 
the  longest  dampers  before  he  began  to  wash 
his  face  and  give  dainty  care  to  his  hands.  In 
fact,  he  did  this  all  day  long  and  sat  up  half  the 
night  trying  to  think  how  he  could  be  as  ex- 
quisitely neat  as  the  little  princess.  And  at 
last  when  daylight  came  and  he  had  put  coal 
in  the  kitchen  ranges  and  had  left  the  drafts 
right  and  had  taken  another  bath  after,  he 


KING  257 

dressed  himself  in  his  poor  best  which  he  had 
most  carefully  brushed,  and  he  ran  straight  back 
up  the  stair  and  into  the  king's  library. 

The  Princess  Vista  was  not  there.  But  it 
was  very,  very  early  this  time  and  the  sun  was 
still  playing  about  outside,  and  so  he  set  himself 
to  wait,  looking  up  at  the  window-seat  where 
he  had  first  seen  her.  As  soon  as  the  sun  began 
to  slant  in  the  latticed  windows  in  earnest,  the 
door  opened  and  the  princess  entered,  her  wav- 
ing hair  falling  on  her  blue  gown,  and  the  little 
blue  slippers  peeping. 

When  she  saw  Hazen,  she  stood  still  and 
spoke  most  freezing  cold. 

"Didn't  I  tell  you  on  no  'count  to  come  here 
this  morning  ?"  she  wished  to  know. 

Generations  of  kings  for  ages  back  bowed  in  a 
body  in  little  Hazen. 

"Did  your  Highness  not  know  that  I  would 
come  ?"  he  asked  simply. 

"Yes,"  said  the  princess  to  that,  and  sat  down 
on  the  window-seat.  "I  will  punish  you," 
said  she,  "but  you  bow  so  nicely  that  I  will  help 
you  first.  Why  do  you  wish  to  be  wise  ?" 

"I  thought  that  I  had  another  reason,"  said 
Hazen,  "but  it  is  because  you  are  wise." 


258  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

"I'm  not  so  very  wise,"  said  the  princess, 
modestly.  "But  I  could  make  you  as  wise 
as  I  am,"  she  suggested  graciously.  "What  do 
you  want  to  know  ?" 

There  was  so  much  that  he  wanted  to  know  ! 
Down  in  the  dark  furnace  room  he  had  been 
forever  wondering  about  the  fires  that  he 
kindled,  about  the  light  that  he  did  not  have, 
about  everything.  He  threw  out  his  arms. 

"I  want  to  know  about  the  whole  world  !"  he 
cried. 

The  princess  considered. 

"Perhaps  they  haven't  teached  me  every- 
thing yet,"  she  said.  "What  do  you  want  to 
know  about  the  world?" 

Hazen  looked  out  the  window  and  across  the 
palace  garden,  lying  all  golden-green  in  the  slow 
opening  light,  with  fountains  and  flowers  and 
parks  and  goldfish  everywhere. 

"What  makes  it  get  day?"  he  asked.  For 
since  he  had  been  a  furnace  boy,  Hazen  had  been 
taught  nothing  at  all. 

"Why,  the  sun  comes,"  answered  the  princess. 

"Is  it  the  same  sun  every  day  ?"  Hazen  asked. 

"I  don't  think  so,"  said  the  princess.  "No 
—  sometimes  it  is  a  red  sun.  Sometimes  it  is 


KING  259 

a  hot  sun.  Sometimes  it  is  big,  big,  when  it 
goes  down.  Oh,  no.  I  am  quite  sure  a  dif- 
ferent sun  comes  up  every  day." 

"Where  do  they  get  'em  all  ?"  Hazen  asked 
wonderingly. 

"Well,"  the  princess  said  thoughtfully,  "suns 
must  be  like  cwort  (she  never  could  say  "court") 
processions.  I  think  they  always  have  them 
ready  somewheres.  What  else  do  you  want  to 
know  about  ?" 

"About  the  Spring,"  said  Hazen.  "Where 
does  that  come  from  ?  Where  do  they  get  it  ? " 

"They  never  teached  me  that,"  said  the 
princess,  "but  /  think  Summer  is  the  mother, 
and  Winter  the  father,  and  Autumn  is  the  noisy 
little  boy,  and  Spring  is  the  little  girl,  with 
violets  on." 

"Of  course,"  cried  Hazen,  joyfully.  "I  never 
thought  of  that.  Why  can't  they  talk?"  he 
asked. 

"They  'most  can,"  said  the  princess.  "Some 
day  maybe  I  can  teach  you  what  they  say. 
What  else  do  you  want  to  know?" 

"About  people,"  said  Hazen.  "Why  are 
some  folks  good  and  some  folks  bad  ?  Why  is 
the  king  kind  and  the  cook  cross  ?" 


260  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

"Oh,  they  never  teached  me  that!"  the 
princess  cried,  impatiently.  "What  a  lot  of 
things  you  ask  !" 

"One  more  question,  your  Highness,"  said 
Hazen,  instantly.  "Why  are  you  so  beautiful  ?" 

The  princess  smiled.  "Now  I'll  teach  you 
my  picture-book  through,"  she  said. 

She  opened  the  picture-book  and  showed  him 
pictures  of  castles  and  beasts  and  lawns  and 
towers  and  ladies  and  mountains  and  bright 
birds  and  pillars  and  cataracts  and  wild  white 
horses  and,  last,  a  picture  of  a  prince  setting 
forth  on  a  quest.  "Prince  Living  sets  out  to 
make  his  fortune,"  it  said  under  the  picture, 
and  Hazen  stared  at  it. 

"Why  shouldn't  I  set  out  to  make  my  for- 
tune ?"  he  cried. 

The  princess  laughed. 

"You  are  a  furnace  boy,"  she  explained. 
"  They  don't  make  fortunes.  Who  would  mind 
the  furnace  if  they  did  ?" 

Hazen  sprang  to  his  feet. 

"That  can't  be  the  way  the  world  is!"  he 
cried.  "Not  when  it's  so  pretty  and  all  stuck 
full  of  goldfish  and  fountains  and  flowers  and 
parks.  If  I  went,  I  would  make  my  fortune  !" 


KING  261 

The  princess  crossed  her  little  slippered  feet  and 
looked  at  him.  And  when  he  met  her  eyes,  he 
was  ashamed  of  his  anger,  though  not  of  his  earn- 
estness, and  he  bowed  again ;  and  all  the  kings  of 
all  the  courts  of  his  ancestors  were  in  the  bow. 

"After  all,"  said  the  princess,  "we  don't  have 
the  furnace  in  Summer.  And  you  bow  so  nicely 
that  I  b'lieve  I  will  help  you  to  make  your  for- 
tune. Anyhow,  I  can  help  you  to  set  out." 

Hazen  was  in  the  greatest  joy.  The  prin- 
cess bade  him  wait  where  he  was,  and  she  ran 
away  and  found  somewhere  a  cast-off  page 
boy's  dress  and  a  cap  with  a  plume  and  a  little 
silver  horn  and  a  wallet,  with  some  bread. 
These  she  brought  to  Hazen  just  as  footsteps 
sounded  on  the  stairs,  and  nursery  governesses 
and  chamberlains  and  foot-pages  and  many 
whose  names  are  as  dust  came  running  pell-mell 
down  the  stairs,  all  looking  for  the  princess. 

"Hide  in  that  alcove,"  said  the  princess, 
"till  I  am  gone.  Then  put  on  this  dress  and 
go  out  at  the  east  gate  which  no  one  can  lock. 
And  as  you  go  by  the  east  wing,  do  not  look  up 
at  my  window  or  I  will  wave  my  hand  and  some- 
body may  see  you  going.  Now  good-bye." 

But  at  that  Hazen  was  suddenly  wretched. 


262  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

"I  can't  leave  you!"  he  said.  "How  can  I 
leave  you?" 

"People  always  leave  people,"  said  the  prin- 
cess, with  superiority.  "Play  that's  one  of  the 
things  I  teached  you." 

At  this  Hazen  suddenly  dropped  on  one  knee 
—  the  kings,  his  fathers,  did  that  for  him  too  — 
and  kissed  the  princess's  little  hand.  And  as 
suddenly  she  wished  very  much  that  she  had 
something  to  give  him. 

"Here,"  she  said,  "here's  my  picture-book. 
Take  it  with  you  and  learn  it  through.  Now 
good-bye." 

And  Hazen  had  just  time  to  slip  in  the  alcove 
when  all  the  n.  g.'s,  c.'s,  f.  p.'s,  and  l.'s,  whom 
there  wasn't  time  to  spell  out,  as  well  as  all  those 
whose  names  are  now  dust,  burst  in  the  room. 

"I  was  just  coming,"  said  the  princess,  and 
went. 

Hazen  dressed  himself  in  the  foot-page's 
livery  and  fastened  the  wallet  at  one  side  and 
the  little  silver  horn  at  the  other,  and  put  on 
the  cap  with  a  plume;  and  he  stole  into  the 
king's  garden,  with  the  picture-book  of  the 
princess  fast  in  his  hand. 

He  had  not  been  in  a  garden  since  he  had  left 


KING  263 

his  father's  garden,  which  he  could  just  remem- 
ber, and  to  be  outdoors  now  seemed  as  wonder- 
ful as  bathing  in  the  ocean,  or  standing  on  a 
high  mountain,  or  seeing  the  dawn.  He  has- 
tened along  between  the  flowering  shrubs  and 
hollyhocks ;  he  heard  the  fountains  plashing 
and  the  song-sparrows  singing  and  the  village 
bells  faintly  sounding ;  he  saw  the  goldfish  and 
the  water-lilies  gleam  in  the  pool  and  the  horses 
cantering  about  the  paddock.  And  all  at  once 
it  seemed  that  the  day  was  his,  to  do  with  what 
he  would,  and  he  felt  as  if  already  that  were  a 
kind  of  fortune  in  his  hand.  So  he  hurried 
round  the  east  wing  of  the  palace  and  looked 
up  eagerly  toward  the  princess's  window.  And 
there  stood  the  Princess  Vista,  watching,  with 
her  hair  partly  brushed. 

When  she  saw  him,  she  leaned  far  out. 

"I  told  you  not  to  look,"  she  said.  "Some- 
body will  see  you  going." 

"I  don't  care  if  anyone  does,"  cried  Hazen. 
"I  had  to  I", 

"How  fine  you  look  now,"  the  princess  could 
not  help  saying. 

"You  are  beautiful  as  the  whole  picture- 
book  !"  he  could  not  help  saying  back. 


264  WHEN   I   WAS   A   LITTLE   GIRL 

"Now,  good-bye!"  she  called  softly,  and 
waved  her  hand. 

"Good-bye  —  oh,  good-bye!"  he  cried,  and 
waved  his  plumed  cap. 

And  then  he  left  her,  looking  after  him  with 
her  hair  partly  brushed,  and  he  ran  out  the  east 
gate  which  was  never  locked,  and  fared  as  fast 
as  he  could  along  the  king's  highway,  in  all  haste 
to  grow  wise  and  really  good  and  loved  and 
beautiful. 

Hazen  went  a  day's  journey  in  the  dust  of  the 
highway,  and  toward  nightfall  he  came  to  a 
deep  wood.  To  him  the  wood  seemed  like 
a  great  hospitable  house,  with  open  doors  be- 
tween the  trees  and  many  rooms  through  which 
he  might  wander  at  will,  the  whole  fair  in  the 
light  of  the  setting  sun.  And  he  entered  the 
gloom  as  he  might  have  entered  a  palace,  ex- 
pecting to  meet  someone. 

Immediately  he  was  aware  of  an  old  man 
seated  under  a  plane  tree,  and  the  old  man 
addressed  him  with  :  — 

"Good  even,  little  lad.    Do  you  travel  far  ?" 

"Not  very,  sir,"  Hazen  replied.  "I  am  only 
going  to  find  my  fortune  and  to  become  wise, 
really  good,  beautiful,  and  loved." 


KING  265 

"So  !"  said  the  old  man.  "Rest  here  a  little 
and  let  us  talk  about  it." 

Hazen  sat  beside  him  and  they  talked  about 
it.  Now,  I  wish  very  much  that  I  might  tell 
you  all  that  they  said,  but  the  old  man  was  so 
old  and  wise  that  his  thoughts  came  chiefly  as 
pictures,  or  in  other  form  without  words,  so 
that  it  was  not  so  much  what  he  said  that  held 
his  meaning  as  what  he  made  Hazen  feel  by 
merely  being  with  him.  Indeed,  I  do  not  know 
whether  he  talked  about  the  stars  or  the  earth 
or  the  ways  of  men,  but  he  made  little  Hazen 
somehow  know  fascinating  things  about  them 
all.  And  when  time  had  passed  and  the  dusk 
was  nearly  upon  them,  the  old  man  lightly 
touched  Hazen's  forehead  :  — 

"Little  lad,"  he  said,  "have  you  ever  looked 
in  there?" 

"In  my  own  head  ?"  said  Hazen,  staring. 

"Even  so,"  said  the  old  man.  "No?  But 
that  might  well  be  a  pleasant  thing  to  do.  Will 
you  not  do  that,  for  a  little  while  ?" 

This  was  the  strangest  thing  that  ever  Hazen 
had  heard.  But  next  moment,  under  the  old 
man's  guidance,  he  found  himself,  as  it  were, 
turned  about  and  seeing  things  that  he  had 


266  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

never  seen,  and  looking  back  into  his  own  head 
as  if  there  were  a  window  that  way.  And  he 
did  it  with  no  great  surprise,  for  it  seemed  quite 
natural  to  him,  and  he  wondered  why  he  had 
never  done  it  before. 

Of  the  actual  construction  of  things  in  there 
Hazen  was  not  more  conscious  than  he  would 
have  been  of  the  bricks  and  mortar  of  a  palace 
filled  with  wonderful  music  and  voices  and  with 
all  sorts  of  surprises.  Here  there  were  both 
surprises  and  voices.  For  instantly  he  could 
see  a  company  of  little  people,  every  one  of  whom 
looked  almost  like  himself.  And  it  was  as  it  is 
when  one  stands  between  two  mirrors  set  op- 
posite, and  the  reflections  reflect  the  reflections 
until  one  is  dizzy;  only  now  it  was  as  if  all  the 
reflections  were  suddenly  to  be  free  of  the  mirror 
and  be  little  living  selves,  ready  to  say  different 
things. 

One  little  Self  had  just  made  a  small  opening 
in  things,  and  several  Selves  were  peering  into 
it.  Hazen  looked  too,  and  he  saw  to  his  amaze- 
ment that  it  was  a  kind  of  picture  of  his  plans  for 
making  his  fortune.  There  were  cities,  seas, 
ships,  men,  forests,  water-falls,  leaping  animals, 
glittering  things,  all  the  adventures  that  he  had 


KING  267 

been  imagining.     And  the  Selves  were  talking 
it  over. 

"Consider  the  work  it  will  be,"  one  was  dis- 
tinctly grumbling,  "before  we  can  get  anything. 
7>  it  worth  it  ?" 

He  was  a  discouraged,  discontented-looking 
Self,  and  though  he  had  Hazen's  mouth,  it  was 
drooping,  and  though  he  had  Hazen's  forehead, 
it  was  frowning. 

A  breezy  little  Self,  all  merry  and  fluffy  and 
light  as  lace,  answered  :  — 

"O-o-o-o!"  it  breathed.  "I  think  it  will  be 
fun.  That's  all  I  care  about  it  —  it  will  be  fun 
and  nothing  else.79 

Then  a  strange,  fascinating  Self,  from  whom 
Hazen  could  not  easily  look  away,  spoke,  half 
singing. 

"Remember  the  beauty  that  we  shall  see  as 
we  go  —  as  we  go,"  he  chanted.  "We  can  live 
for  the  beauty  everywhere  and  for  nothing 
else." 

"Think  of  the  things  we  shall  learn!"  cried 
another  Self.  "Knowledge  —  knowledge  all  the 
way  —  and  nothing  else." 

Then  a  soft  voice  spoke,  which  was  sweeter 
than  any  voice  that  Hazen  had  ever  heard,  and 


268  WHEN  I   WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

the  Self  to  whom  it  belonged  looked  like  Hazen 
when  he  was  asleep. 

"Nay,"  it  said  sighing,  "there  are  many 
dangers.  But  to  meet  dangers  bravely  and  to 
overcome  them  finely  is  the  way  to  grow  strong." 

At  this  a  little  voice  laughed  and  cracked  as 
it  laughed,  so  that  it  sounded  like  something 
being  broken  which  could  never  be  mended. 

"Being  strong  and  wise  don't  mean  making 
one's  fortune,"  it  said.  "Just  one  thing  means 
fortune,  and  that  is  being  rich.  To  be  rich  — 
rich  !  That's  what  we  want  and  it  is  all  we 
want.  And  I  am  ready  to  fight  with  everyone 
of  you  to  get  riches." 

Hazen  looked  where  the  voice  sounded,  and 
to  his  horror  he  saw  a  little  Self  made  in  his  own 
image,  but  hideously  bent  and  distorted,  so 
that  he  knew  exactly  how  he  would  look  if  he 
were  a  dwarf. 

"Not  me!"  cried  the  breezy  little  Fun  Self 
then.  "You  wouldn't  fight  me  !" 

"Yes,  I  would,"  said  the  dwarf.  "I'd  fight 
everybody,  and  when  we  were  rich,  you'd  thank 
me  for  it." 

"Ah,  no,"  said  the  Knowledge  Self.  "I  am 
the  only  proper  ruler  in  this  fortune  affair. 


KING  269 

Knowledge  is  enough  for  us  to  have.  Knowl- 
edge is  what  we  want." 

"Beauty  is  all  you  need  !"  cried  the  fascinat- 
ing Beauty  Self.  "I  am  the  one  who  should  rule 
you  all." 

"Well,  rich,  rich,  rich  !  Do  I  not  say  so  ? 
Will  not  riches  bring  beauty  and  fun  and  leisure 
for  knowledge?"  said  the  dwarf.  "Riches  do 
it  all.  Do  as  I  say.  Take  me  for  your  guide." 

"Strength  is  the  thing!"  said  a  great  voice, 
suddenly.  "We  want  to  be  big  and  strong  and 
nothing  else.  I  am  going  to  rule  in  this."  And 
the  voice  of  the  Strong  Self  seemed  to  be  every- 
where. 

"  Not  without  me  .  .  .  not  without  me  !"  said 
the  Wise  Self.  But  it  spoke  faintly,  and  could 
hardly  be  heard  in  the  clamour  of  all  the  others 
who  now  all  began  talking  at  once,  with  the  little 
Fun  Self  dancing  among  them  and  crying,  "I'm 
the  one  —  you  all  want  me  to  rule,  really,  but 
you  don't  know  it." 

And  suddenly,  in  the  midst  of  all  this,  Hazen 
began  to  see  strange  little  shadows  appearing 
and  lurking  about,  somewhat  slyly,  and  often 
running  away,  but  always  coming  back.  They 
were  tiny  and  faintly  outlined  —  less  like  re- 


270  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

flections  in  a  mirror  than  like  reflections  which 
had  not  yet  found  a  mirror  for  their  home.  And 
they  spoke  in  thin  little  voices  which  Hazen 
could  hear,  and  said  :  — 

"We'll  help  you,  Rich!  We'll  help  you, 
Strength  !  We'll  help  you,  Fun  !  Only  let  us 
be  one  of  you  and  we'll  help  you  win,  and  you 
shall  reign.  Here  are  Envy  Self  and  Lying  Self 
and  Hate  Self  and  Cruel  Self  —  we'll  help,  if 
you'll  let  us  in  !" 

And  when  he  heard  this,  Hazen  suddenly 
called  out,  with  all  his  might :  — 

"Stop  !"  he  cried,  "I'm  the  ruler  here  !  I'm 
Hazen!" 

And  of  course  he  was  the  ruler  —  because  it 
was  the  inside  of  his  own  head. 

Instantly  there  was  complete  silence  there, 
as  when  a  bell  is  suddenly  struck  in  the  midst 
of  whisperings.  And  all  the  Selves  shrank  back. 

"Hazen!"  they  said,  "we  didn't  know  you 
were  listening.  You  be  king.  We'll  help  — 
we'll  help." 

"As  long  as  I  live,"  said  little  Hazen  then, 
"not  one  of  you  shall  rule  in  here  without  me. 
I  shall  want  many  of  you  to  help  me,  but  only 
as  much  as  I  tell  you  to,  and  no  more.  I'm 


KING  271 

only  a  furnace  boy,  but  I  tell  you  that  I  am  king 
of  the  inside  of  my  own  head,  and  I'm  going  to 
rule  here  and  nobody  else  !" 

Then,  nearer  than  any  of  the  rest  —  and  he 
could  not  tell  just  where  it  came  from,  but  he 
knew  how  near  it  was  —  another  voice  spoke  to 
him.  And  somewhat  it  was  like  the  Thought 
that  had  spoken  to  him  in  the  king's  kitchen 
and  bidden  him  go  up  to  the  king's  library  — 
but  yet  it  was  nearer  than  that  had  been. 

"Bravely  done,  Hazen,"  it  said.  "Be  king — • 
be  king,  even  as  you  have  said  !" 

With  the  voice  came  everywhere  sweet  music, 
sounding  all  about  Hazen  and  in  him  and 
through  him ;  and  everywhere  was  air  of  dreams 
—  he  could  hardly  tell  whether  he  was  watching 
these  or  was  really  among  them.  There  were 
sweet  voices,  dim  figures,  gestures  of  dancing, 
soft  colours,  lights,  wavy,  wonderful  lines,  little 
stars  suddenly  appearing,  flowers,  kindly  faces, 
and  then  one  face  —  the  exquisite,  watching 
face  of  the  Princess  Vista  at  the  window,  with 
her  hair  partly  brushed  .  .  .  and  then  dark- 
ness. .  .  . 

.  .  .  When  he  woke,  it  was  early  morning. 
The  sun  was  pricking  through  the  leaves  of 


272  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

the  forest,  the  birds  were  singing  so  sweetly 
and  swiftly  that  it  was  as  if  their  notes  over- 
lapped and  made  one  sound  on  which  everything 
was  threaded  like  curious  and  beautiful  beads 
on  a  silver  cord.  The  old  man  was  gone ;  and 
before  Hazen,  the  way,  empty  and  green,  led 
on  with  promise  of  surprise. 

And  now  as  he  went  forward,  eating  his  bread 
and  gathering  berries,  Hazen  had  never  felt 
so  able  to  make  his  future.  It  was  as  if  he  were 
not  one  boy  but  many  boys  in  one,  and  they  all 
ready  to  do  his  bidding.  Surely,  he  thought, 
his  fortune  must  lie  at  the  first  turn  of  the  path  ! 

But  at  the  first  turn  of  the  path  he  met  a  little 
lad  no  older  than  himself,  who  was  drawing  a 
handcart  filled  with  something  covered,  and  he 
was  singing  merrily. 

"Hello,"  said  the  Merry  Lad.  "Where  are 
you  going  ?" 

"Nowhere  in  particular,"  said  Hazen.  And 
though  he  had  readily  confided  to  the  old  man 
what  he  was  hoping  to  find,  someway  Hazen 
felt  that  if  he  told  the  Merry  Lad,  he  would  laugh 
at  him.  And  that  no  one  likes,  though  it  is 
never  a  thing  to  fear. 

"Come  on  with  me,"  said  the  Merry  Lad.     "I 


KING  273 

am  going  in  the  town  to  sell  my  images.  There 
will  be  great  sport." 

And,  without  stopping  to  think  whether  his 
fortune  lay  that  way,  Hazen,  whose  blood  leapt 
at  the  idea  of  the  town  and  its  sports,  turned 
and  went  with  him. 

The  Merry  Lad  was  very  merry.  He  told 
Hazen  more  games  and  riddles  than  ever  he  had 
heard.  He  sang  him  songs,  did  little  dances  for 
him  in  the  open  glades,  raced  with  him,  and  when 
they  reached  the  dusty  highway,  got  him  in 
happy  talk  with  the  other  wayfarers.  And  by 
the  time  they  gained  the  town,  they  were  a  gay 
little  company.  There  the  Merry  Lad  took 
his  images  to  the  market-place  and  spread  them 
under  a  tree  —  little  figures  made  to  represent 
Mirth,  Merriment,  Laughter,  Fun,  Fellowship, 
and  Delight  —  no  end  there  was  to  the  variety 
and  charm  of  the  little  images,  and  no  end  to 
all  that  the  Merry  Lad  did  to  attract  the  people 
to  them.  He  sang  and  danced  and  whistled 
and  even  stood  on  his  head,  and  everyone 
crowded  about  him  and  was  charmed. 

"Pass  my  cap  about,"  he  said,  while  he 
danced,  to  Hazen.  "They  will  give  us  money." 

So  Hazen  passed  the  Merry  Lad's  cap,  and 


274  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

the  people  gave  them  money.  They  filled  the 
cap,  indeed,  with  clinking  coins,  and  went  away 
carrying  the  images.  And  by  nightfall  the 
Merry  Lad  and  Hazen  had  more  money  than 
they  knew  how  to  use. 

uOh,"  the  Merry  Lad  cried,  "we  shall  have 
a  glorious  time.  Come  !'? 

Now  Hazen  had  never  been  in  the  town  at 
night,  and  he  had  never  been  in  any  town  at  any 
time  without  some  of  the  king's  servants  for 
whom  he  had  had  to  fetch  and  carry.  To  him 
the  streets  were  strange  and  wonderful,  blazing 
with  lights,  filled  with  gayly  dressed  folk,  and 
sounding  now  and  again  to  strains  of  music. 
But  the  Merry  Lad  seemed  wholly  at  home,  and 
he  went  here  and  there  like  a  painted  moth, 
belonging  to  the  night  and  a  part  of  it.  They 
feasted  and  jested  and  joyed,  and  most  of  all 
they  spent  the  money  that  they  had  earned, 
and  they  spent  it  on  themselves.  I  cannot  tell 
you  the  things  that  they  bought.  They  bought 
a  wonderful,  tropical,  talking  bird  ;  they  bought 
a  little  pony  on  which  they  both  could  ride,  with 
the  bird  on  the  pony's  neck ;  they  bought  a 
tiny  trick  monkey  and  a  suit  of  Indian  clothes 
with  fringed  leggings  and  head-feathers ;  and 


KING  275 

a  music-box  that  played  like  a  whole  band. 
And  when  the  evening  with  its  lights  and  pan- 
tomimes was  over,  they  pitched  their  tent  on 
the  edge  of  the  town,  picketed  the  pony  outside, 
brought  the  other  things  safely  within,  and  lay 
down  to  sleep. 

Now,  since  they  had  no  pillows,  Hazen  took 
the  picture-book  which  the  princess  had  given 
him  and  made  his  pillow  of  that.  And  as  soon 
as  everything  was  quiet,  and  the  Merry  Lad  and 
the  talking  bird  were  asleep  and  the  pony  was 
dozing  at  its  picket,  the  princess's  picture-book 
began  to  talk  to  Hazen.  I  do  not  mean  that  it 
said  words  —  it  is  a  great  mistake  to  think  that 
everything  that  is  said  must  be  said  in  words  — 
but  it  talked  to  him  none  the  less,  and  better 
than  with  words.  It  showed  him  the  princess  in 
her  blue  gown  sitting  in  the  window-seat  with  her 
little  blue  slippers  crossed.  It  showed  him  her 
face  as  she  taught  him  about  the  sun  and  the 
world,  and  taught  him  her  picture-book  through. 
It  reminded  him  that  his  page-boy's  dress  was 
worn  because,  in  his  heart,  he  was  her  page. 
It  brought  back  the  picture  of  her  standing  at 
the  window,  with  her  hair  partly  brushed,  to 
wave  him  a  good-bye  —  "Now,  good-bye,"  he 


276  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

could  hear  her  little  voice.  He  remembered 
now  that  he  had  started  out  to  find  his  fortune 
and  to  become  wise,  really  good,  loved,  and 
beautiful.  And  lo,  all  this  that  he  had  done  all 
day  with  the  Merry  Lad  —  was  it  helping  him 
to  any  of  these  ? 

As  soon  as  he  knew  this,  he  rose  softly  and, 
emptying  his  pockets  of  his  share  of  the  money 
earned  that  day,  he  laid  it  near  the  Merry  Lad's 
pillow,  took  the  picture-book,  and  slipped  away. 

The  Merry  Lad  did  not  wake,  but  the  talking 
bird  stirred  on  his  perch  and  called  after  him  : 
"Stay  where  you  are!  Stay  where  you  are!" 
And  the  words  seemed  to  echo  in  Hazen's  head 
and  were  repeated  there  as  if  another  voice  had 
said  them,  and  while  he  hesitated  at  the  door  of 
the  tent,  he  knew  what  that  other  voice  was  : 
It  was  within  his  head  indeed,  and  it  was  the 
voice  of  that  breezy  little  Self,  all  merry  and 
fluffy  and  light  as  lace  —  the  Fun  Self  itself  ! 

And  then  he  knew  that  all  day  long  that  was 
the  voice  that  he  had  been  obeying  when  he 
went  with  the  Merry  Lad,  and  all  day  long  that 
Self  had  been  guiding  him,  and  had  been  his 
ruler.  And  he  himself  had  not  been  king  of  the 
Selves  at  all ! 


KING  277 

Hazen  slipped  out  into  the  night  and  ran  as 
fast  as  he  could.  Nearly  all  that  night  he 
travelled  without  stopping,  lest  when  day  came 
the  Merry  Lad  should  overtake  him.  And  when 
day  did  come,  Hazen  found  himself  far  away, 
and  passing  the  gate  of  a  garden  where,  in  the 
dawn,  a  youth  was  walking,  reading  a  book. 
Him  Hazen  asked  if  he  might  come  in  the  garden 
and  rest  for  a  little. 

This  Bookman,  who  was  pleasant  and  gentle 
and  seemed  half  dreaming,  welcomed  him  in, 
and  gave  him  fruit  to  eat,  and  Hazen  fell  asleep 
in  the  arbour.  When  he  awoke,  the  Bookman 
sat  beside  him,  still  reading,  and  seeing  that 
the  boy  was  awake,  he  began  reading  to  him. 

He  read  a  wonderful  story  about  the  elements 
of  which  everything  in  the  world  is  made.  He 
read  that  they  are  a  great  family  of  more  than 
seventy,  and  so  magically  arranged  that  they 
make  a  music,  done  in  octaves  like  the  white 
keys  of  a  piano.  So  that  a  man,  if  he  is  skilful, 
can  play  with  these  octaves  as  he  might  with 
octaves  of  sound,  and  with  a  thousand  varia- 
tions can  make  what  he  will,  and  almost  play 
for  himself  a  strain  of  the  heavenly  harmony  in 
which  things  began.  You  see  what  wonderful 


278  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

music  that  would  be  ?  Hazen  saw,  and  he  could 
not  listen  enough. 

Until  dark  he  was  in  the  garden,  eating  fruit 
and  listening ;  and  the  Bookman,  seeing  how  he 
loved  to  listen,  asked  him  if  he  would  not  stay 
on  in  the  garden,  and  live  there  awhile.  And 
without  stopping  to  think  whether  his  fortune 
lay  that  way,  Hazen  said  that  he  would  stay. 

Everything  that  the  Bookman  read  to  him 
was  like  magic,  and  it  taught  Hazen  to  do  won- 
derful things.  For  example,  he  learned  mar- 
vellous ways  with  sentences  and  with  words. 
The  Bookman  showed  him  how  to  get  inside 
of  words,  as  if  they  had  doors,  so  that  Hazen 
could  look  from  out  the  words  that  were  spoken 
almost  as  if  they  had  been  little  boxes,  and  he 
inside.  The  Bookman  showed  him  how  to 
look  behind  the  words  on  a  page  and  to  see  how 
different  they  seemed  that  way.  He  would  say 
a  sentence,  and  instantly  it  would  become  solid, 
and  he  would  set  it  up,  and  Hazen  could  hang 
to  it,  or  turn  upon  it  like  a  turning-bar.  It  was 
all  great  sport.  For  sentences  were  not  the 
only  things  with  which  he  could  juggle.  He 
showed  Hazen  how  to  think  a  thing  and  have 
that  become  solid  in  the  air,  too.  Just  as  one 


KING  279 

might  think,  "Now  I  will  plant  my  garden," 
and  presently  there  the  garden  is,  solid ;  or, 
"Now  I  will  get  my  lesson,"  and  presently,  sure 
enough,  there  the  lesson  zV,  in  one's  head,  so  the 
Bookman  taught  Hazen  to  do  with  nearly  all 
his  thoughts,  making  many  and  many  of  them 
into  actions  or  else  into  a  solid,  so  that  it  could 
be  handled  as  a  garden  can. 

And  at  last,  one  night,  Hazen  thought  of  the 
Princess  Vista,  hoping  that  that  thought  would 
become  solid  too,  and  that  the  princess  would 
be  there  before  him,  for  he  wished  very  much  to 
see  her.  But  it  did  not  do  so,  and  he  asked  the 
Bookman  the  reason. 

"Why  does  not  my  thought  about  the  Prin- 
cess Vista  become  solid,  and  the  princess  be  here 
beside  me?"  he  asked  wistfully. 

"Some  thoughts  take  a  very  long  time  to 
become  solid,"  said  the  Bookman,  gently,  "and 
sometimes  we  have  to  travel  a  long  way  to  make 
them  so.  If  you  think  of  the  princess  long  and 
hard  enough,  I  daresay  that  you  will  go  to  her 
some  day  —  and  there  she  will  be,  solid." 

But  of  course  as  soon  as  Hazen  began  thinking 
of  the  princess  long  and  hard,  he  wanted,  more 
than  anything  else  in  the  world,  to  be  doing 


280  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

something  that  should  hasten  the  time  of  seeing 
her,  which  could  not  well  be  until  he  had  made 
his  fortune.  So  thereupon  he  told  the  Bookman 
that  he  must  be  leaving  the  garden. 

"I  knew  that  the  day  must  come,"  said  the 
Bookman,  sadly.  "Could  you  not  stay  ?" 

And  when  he  said  that,  Hazen  wanted  so 
very  much  to  stay  there  in  the  enchantment  of 
the  place,  that  it  seemed  as  if  a  voice  in  his 
own  head  were  echoing  the  words.  And  while 
he  hesitated  at  the  gate  of  the  garden,  he  knew 
what  that  other  voice  was  !  It  was  within  his 
head  indeed,  and  it  was  the  voice  of  that  strange, 
fascinating  Self  from  which  he  had  found  that 
he  could  hardly  look  away  —  the  Knowledge 
Self  itself.  And  then  he  knew  that  all  this  time 
in  this  garden,  it  was  this  voice  that  he  had  been 
obeying  and  it  had  been  guiding  him.  He  him- 
self had  not  been  king  of  the  Selves  at  all.  So 
when  he  knew  that,  he  hesitated  not  a  moment, 
for  he  saw  that  although  the  Bookman  was  far 
finer  than  the  Merry  Lad,  still  neither  must  be 
king,  but  only  he  himself  must  be  king. 

"Alas  !"  he  cried,  as  he  left  the  garden,  "I 
am  not  nearer  to  making  my  fortune  now  than 
I  was  at  the  beginning  !" 


XV 
KING  (continued) 

So  Hazen  left  the  garden  and  the  gentle  Book- 
man, who  was  loath  to  let  him  go,  and  hurried 
out  into  the  world  again. 

He  travelled  now  for  many  days,  hearing  often 
of  far  countries  which  held  what  he  sought,  but 
never  reaching  any  of  them.  Always  he  did 
what  tasks  came  to  his  hand,  for  this  seemed  a 
a  good  way  toward  fortune.  But  sometimes 
the  Envy  Self  and  the  Discontented  Self  spoke 
loudly  in  his  head  so  that  he  thought  that  it 
was  he  himself  who  was  speaking,  and  he  obeyed 
them,  and  stopped  his  work,  and  until  the 
chance  to  finish  it  was  lost,  he  did  not  know  that 
it  was  these  Selves  who  had  made  him  cease  his 
task  and  lose  his  chance  and  be  that  much  far- 
ther from  fortune.  For  that  was  the  way  of 
all  the  Selves  —  they  had  a  clever  fashion  of 
making  Hazen  think  that  their  voices  were  his 
own  voice,  and  sometimes  he  could  hardly  tell 
the  difference. 

At  last,  one  night,  he  came  to  a  hill,  sloping 

281 


282  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

gently  as  if  something  beautiful  were  overflow- 
ing. Its  trees  looked  laid  upon  the  mellow  west 
beyond.  The  turf  was  like  some  Titan  woman's 
embroidery,  sheared  and  flowered.  Hazen 
looked  at  it  all,  and  at  the  great  sky  and  the 
welcoming  distance,  and  before  he  knew  whether 
it  came  as  a  thought  or  as  a  song,  he  had  made 
a  little  rhyme  :  — 

Do  you  wish  you  had  a  world  of  gold 
With  a  turquoise  roof  on  high, 
And  a  coral  east  and  a  ruby  west 
And  diamonds  in  the  sky  ? 

Do  you  wish  there  were  little  doors  of  air 

That  a  child  might  open  wide, 

Where  were  emerald  chairs    and   a   tourmaline 

rug 
And  a  moonstone  moon  beside  ? 

Do  you  wish  the  lakes  were  silver  plates 
And  the  sea  a  sapphire  dish  ? 
What  a  wonderful,  wonderful  world  it  is  — 
For  haven't  you  got  your  wish  ? 

He  liked  to  sing  this,  and  he  loved  the  hill  and 
the  evening.     He  lay  there  a  long  time,  making 


KING  283 

little  rhymes  and  loving  everything.  Next  day 
he  wandered  away  in  the  woods,  and  asked  for 
food  at  a  hut,  and  offered  the  bewildered  woman 
a  rhyme  in  payment,  and  at  night  he  returned 
to  his  hill,  and  there  he  lived  for  days,  playing 
that  he  was  living  all  alone  in  the  world  —  that 
there  was  not  another  person  anywhere  on  the 
earth. 

But  one  night  when  he  was  lying  on  the  hill- 
side, composing  a  song  to  the  Littlest  Leaf  in 
the  Wood,  suddenly  the  voice  of  his  song  was 
not  so  loud  as  a  voice  within  him  which  seemed 
to  say  how  much  he  delighted  to  be  singing. 
And  then  he  knew  the  voice  —  that  it  was  the 
voice  of  the  Beauty  Self  in  his  own  head,  that  it 
was  that  voice  that  had  made  him  linger  on  the 
hillside  and  had  commanded  him  to  sing  about 
the  beauty  in  the  world  and  to  do  nothing  else. 
And  all  this  time  it  had  been  king  of  the  Selves, 
and  not  he  ! 

He  rose  and  fled  down  the  hillside,  and  for  days 
he  wandered  alone,  sick  at  heart  because  this 
fair  Beauty  Self  had  tricked  him  into  following 
her  and  no  other,  even  as  the  Fun  Self  and  the 
Knowledge  Self  had  done.  But  even  while  he 
wandered,  grieving,  again  and  again  the  Idle 


284  WHEN   I   WAS  A  LITTLE   GIRL 

Self,  the  Strong  Self,  the  Discontented  Self, 
deceived  him  for  a  little  while  and  succeeded  in 
making  their  own  voices  heard,  and  now  and 
again  the  little  shadowy  Selves  —  the  Malice 
and  Cruel  and  Envy  Selves  drew  very  near  him 
and  tried  to  speak  for  him.  And  they  all  fought 
to  keep  him  from  being  king  and  to  deceive 
him  into  thinking  that  they  spoke  for  him. 

One  brooding  noonday,  as  Hazen  was  travel- 
ling, alone  and  tired,  on  the  highroad,  a  carriage 
overtook  him,  and  the  gentleman  within,  looking 
sharply  at  him,  ordered  the  carriage  stopped, 
and  asked  him  courteously  if  he  was  not  the 
poet  whose  songs  he  had  sometimes  heard,  and 
of  whose  knowledge  and  good-fellowship  others 
had  told  him.  It  proved  that  it  was  no  other 
than  Hazen  whom  he  meant,  and  he  took  him 
with  him  in  his  carriage  to  a  great,  wonderful 
house  overlooking  the  valley,  and  commanding 
a  sovereign  mountain  on  whose  very  summit 
stood  a  deserted  castle.  It  seemed  as  if  merely 
looking  on  that  wonderful  prospect  would  help 
one  to  be  wise  and  really  good  and  beautiful 
and  worthy  to  be  loved. 

At  once  Hazen's  host,  the  Gentleman  of  the 
Carriage,  began  showing  him  his  treasures  and 


KING  285 

all  that  made  life  for  him.  The  house  was  filled 
with  curious  and  beautiful  things,  pictures, 
ivories,  marbles,  and  tapestries,  and  with  many 
friends.  In  the  evenings  there  were  always 
festivities  ;  mirth  and  laughter  were  everywhere, 
and  Hazen  was  laden  with  gifts  of  these  and 
other  things,  and  delighted  in  the  entertainment. 
But  by  day,  in  a  high-ceiled  library  and  a  cool 
study,  the  two  spent  hours  pouring  over  letters 
and  science,  finding  out  the  secrets  of  the  world, 
getting  on  the  other  side  of  words,  saying  sen- 
tences, and  thinking  thoughts  that  became  solid  ; 
or  they  would  wander  on  the  hillsides  and  carry 
rare  books  and  dream  of  the  beauty  in  the  world 
and  weave  little  songs.  Now  they  would  be 
idle,  now  absorbed  in  feats  of  strength,  and  now 
they  would  descend  into  the  town  and  there 
delight  in  its  great  sport.  And  in  all  this  Hazen 
had  some  part  and  earned  his  own  way,  because 
of  his  cleverness  and  willingness  to  enter  in  the 
life  and  belong  to  it. 

One  day,  standing  on  a  balcony  of  the  beauti- 
ful house,  looking  across  at  the  mountain  and 
the  deserted  castle,  Hazen  said  aloud :  — 

"This  is  the  true  life.  This  is  fortune.  For 
now  I  hear  all  the  voices  of  all  my  Selves,  and  I 


286  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE   GIRL 

give  good  things  to  each,  and  I  am  king  of  them 
all!" 

But  even  as  he  spoke  he  heard  another  voice 
sounding  within  his  own,  and  it  laughed,  and 
cracked  as  it  laughed,  so  that  it  sounded  like 
something  being  broken  that  could  never  be 
mended. 

"I  told  you  so,  Hazen  !  I  told  you  so!"  it 
cried.  "Being  loved  and  really  good  do  not 
mean  making  our  fortune.  Just  one  thing 
means  fortune,  and  that  is  being  rich.  To  be 
rich,  rich,  means  good  times  and  learning  and 
beauty  and  idleness.  I've  fought  everyone  of 
the  others,  and  now  you've  got  all  that  they  had 
to  offer,  because  you  have  let  me  be  king  — 
me  and  no  other" 

To  his  horror,  Hazen  recognized  the  voice  of 
the  dwarf,  the  Riches  Self,  and  knew  that  he  was 
deceived  again,  that  he  himself  was  ruler  of 
nothing,  and  that  the  dwarf  was  now  king  of  all 
his  Selves. 

When  he  realized  this,  it  seemed  to  Hazen 
that  his  heart  was  pierced  and  that  he  could  not 
live  any  longer.  Suppose  —  ah,  suppose  that 
he  did  get  back  to  the  Princess  Vista  now  — 
what  had  he  to  take  to  her  ?  Could  he  give  her 


KING  287 

himself  —  a  Self  of  which  not  he  [but  the  dwarf 
was  the  owner  ? 

Somehow,  in  spite  of  their  protestations  and 
persuadings,  Hazen  said  good-bye  to  them  all, 
to  his  host  and  to  those  who  had  detained  him, 
and  he  was  off  down  into  the  valley  alone  —  not 
knowing  where  he  was  going  or  what  he  was 
going  to  do,  or  what  hope  now  remained  that 
he  should  ever  be  any  nearer  the  fortune  for 
which  he  had  so  hopefully  set  out. 

It  was  bright  moonlight  when  he  came  to  the 
edge  of  a  fair,  green,  valley  meadow.  The  white- 
ness was  flooding  the  world,  as  if  it  would  wash 
away  everything  that  had  ever  been  and  would 
begin  it  all  over  again.  And  in  the  centre  of 
the  meadow,  all  the  brightness  seemed  to  gather 
and  thicken  and  glitter,  as  if  something  mys- 
terious were  there.  It  drew  Hazen  to  itself, 
as  if  it  were  so  pure  that  it  must  be  what  he  was 
seeking,  and  he  broke  through  the  hedge  and 
stepped  among  the  flowers  of  the  lush  grass,  and 
he  stood  before  it. 

It  was  a  fountain  of  water,  greater  than  any 
fountain  that  Hazen  had  ever  seen  or  conceived. 
It  rose  from  the  green  in  pure  strands  of  exqui- 
site firmness,  in  almost  the  slim  lines  and  spirals 


288  WHEN   I   WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

of  a  stair;  and  its  high,  curving  spray  and  its 
plash  and  murmur  made  it  rather  like  a  gigantic 
white  tree,  with  music  in  its  boughs  —  the  tree 
of  life  itself. 

Hazen  could  no  more  have  helped  leaping 
in  the  fountain  than  he  could  have  helped  his 
joy  in  its  beauty.  He  sprang  in  the  soft  waters 
as  if  he  were  springing  into  arms,  and  it  drew 
him  to  itself  as  if  he  belonged  to  it.  The  waters 
flowed  over  him,  and  he  felt  purified,  and  as  if 
a  healing  light  had  shone  through  him,  body  and 
mind. 

But  to  his  amazement,  he  did  not  remain  in 
the  fountain's  basin.  Gently,  as  if  he  were 
upborne  by  unseen  hands,  he  mounted  with  the 
rise  of  the  fountain,  in  its  slim  lines  and  spirals, 
until  he  found  himself  high  above  the  meadow 
in  a  silvery  tower  that  was  thrown  out  from  the 
fountain  itself.  And  there,  alone  in  that  lofty 
silence,  it  was  as  if  he  were  face  to  face  with 
himself  and  could  see  his  own  heart. 

Then  the  Thought  spoke  to  him  which  had 
spoken  to  him  long  ago  that  morning  in  the 
king's  kitchen,  and  again  on  that  first  night  in 
the  wood. 

"Hazen  !"  it  said,  "you  are  not  wise  or  really 


KING  289 

good  or  loved  or  beautiful.  Why  don't  you 
become  so  ?" 

"I!"  said  Hazen,  sadly.  "I  have  lost  my 
chance.  I  came  out  to  find  my  fortune  and  I 
have  thrown  it  away." 

But  still  the  Thought  spoke  to  him,  and  said 
the  same  thing  over  and  over  so  many  times  that 
at  last  he  answered  :  — 

"What,  then,  must  I  do  ?"  he  asked. 

And  then  he  listened,  there  in  the  night  and 
the  stillness,  to  hear  what  it  was  that  he  must 
do.  And  this  was  the  first  time  that  ever  he 
had  listened  like  this,  or  questioned  carefully 
his  course.  Always  before  he  had  done  what 
seemed  to  him  the  thing  that  he  wished  to  do, 
without  questioning  whether  his  fortune  lay 
that  way. 

"Bravely  spoken,  Hazen,"  said  the  Thought, 
then.  "Someone  near  is  in  great  need.  Find 
him  and  help  him. 

Instantly  Hazen  leaped  lightly  to  the  ground, 
and  ran  away  through  the  moonlit  meadow,  and 
he  sought  as  never  in  his  life  had  he  sought  any- 
thing before,  for  the  one  near,  in  great  need, 
whom  he  was  to  find  and  help.  All  through 
the  night  he  sought,  and  with  the  setting  of  the 


290  WHEN   I   WAS  A   LITTLE  GIRL 

moon  he  was  struggling  up  the  mountain,  be- 
cause it  seemed  to  him  that  he  must  do  some 
hard  thing,  and  this  was  hard.  In  the  early 
dawn  he  stood  on  the  mountain's  very  summit, 
and  knocked  at  the  gate  of  the  deserted  castle 
there.  And  it  was  the  forsaken  castle  of  his 
father,  the  king,  whom  the  Princess  Vista's 
father  had  conquered ;  but  this  Hazen  did  not 
know. 

No  sound  answered  his  summons,  so  he  swung 
the  heavy  gate  on  its  broken  hinges  and  stepped 
within.  The  court  yard  was  vacant  and  echo- 
ing and  grass-grown.  Rabbits  scuttled  away 
at  his  approach,  and  about  the  sightless  eyes 
of  the  windows,  bats  were  clinging  and  moving. 
The  clock  in  the  tower  was  still  and  pointed 
to  an  hour  long-spent.  The  whole  place 
breathed  of  things  forgotten  and  of  those  who, 
having  loved  them,  were  forgotten  too. 

Hazen  mounted  the  broad,  mossy  steps  lead- 
ing to  the  portals,  and  he  found  one  door  slightly 
ajar.  Wondering  greatly,  he  touched  it  open, 
and  the  groined  hall  appeared  like  a  grim  face 
from  behind  a  mask.  On  the  stone  floor,  not 
far  beyond  the  threshold,  lay  an  old  man,  mo- 
tionless. And  when,  uttering  a  little  cry  of 


KING  291 

pity  and  amazement,  Hazen  stooped  over  him> 
he  knew  him  at  once  to  be  that  old  man  who 
had  greeted  him  at  the  entrance  to  the  wood 
on  the  evening  of  the  day  on  which  he  himself 
had  left  the  king's  palace. 

What  with  bringing  him  water  and  bathing 
his  face  and  chafing  his  hands,  Hazen  at  last 
enabled  the  old  man  to  speak,  and  found  that 
he  had  been  nearly  all  his  life-time  the  keeper 
of  the  castle  and  for  some  years  its  only  occu- 
pant. He  was  not  ill,  but  he  had  fallen  and 
was  hurt,  and  he  had  lain  for  several  days 
without  food.  So  Hazen,  who  knew  well  how 
to  do  it,  kindled  a  fire  of  fagots  in  the  great, 
echoing  castle  kitchen,  and,  from  the  scanty 
store  which  he  found  there,  prepared  broth  and 
eggs,  and  then  helped  the  old  man  to  his  bed 
in  the  little  room  which  had  once  been  a  king's 
cabinet. 

"Lad,  lad  !"  said  the  old  man,  when  he  had 
remembered  Hazen.  "And  have  you  found  your 
fortune  ?  And  are  you  by  now  wise,  really 
good,  beautiful,  and  loved  ?" 

"Alas  !"  said  Hazen,  only,  and  could  say  no 
more. 

The  old  man  nodded.     "I  know,  I  know," 


292  WHEN   I   WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

he  said  sadly.  "The  little  Selves  have  been 
about,  ruling  here  and  ruling  there.  Is  it  not 
so  ?  Sit  here  a  little,  and  let  us  talk  about  it." 

Then  Hazen  told  him  all  that  had  befallen 
since  that  night  when  they  sat  together  in  the 
wood.  And  though  his  adventures  seemed  to 
Hazen  very  wonderful,  the  old  man  merely 
nodded,  as  if  he  were  not  hearing  but  only  re- 
membering. 

"Ay,"  he  said,  at  the  last,  "I  have  met  them 
all  —  the  Merry  Lad,  the  Bookman,  and  all 
the  rest,  and  have  dwelt  a  space  with  some. 
And  I,  too,  have  come  to  the  fountain  in  the 
night,  and  have  asked  what  it  was  that  I  should 
do." 

"But  tell  me,  sir,"  said  Hazen,  eagerly,  "how 
was  it  that  I  was  told  at  the  fountain  that  there 
was  one  near  in  great  need.  Did  the  fountain 
know  you  ?  Or  did  my  Thought  ?  And  how 
could  that  be?" 

"Nay,  lad,"  said  the  old  man,  "but  always, 
for  everyone,  there  is  someone  near  in  need  — 
yet.  One  has  only  to  look." 

Then  he  talked  to  Hazen  more  about  his  for- 
tune, and  again  the  old  man's  meaning  was  in 
his  mere  presence,  so  that  whether  he  talked 


KING  293 

about  the  stars  or  the  earth  or  the  ways  of  men, 
he  made  Hazen  know  fascinating  things  about 
them  all.  And  now  Hazen  listened  far  differ- 
ently from  the  way  that  he  had  listened  that 
other  time  when  they  had  talked,  and  it  was  as  if 
the  words  had  grown,  and  as  if  they  meant  more 
than  once  they  had  meant. 

Now,  whoever  has  stood  for  the  first  time  in 
a  great,  empty  castle  knows  that  there  is  one 
thing  that  he  longs  to  do  above  all  other  things, 
and  this  is  to  explore.  And  when  the  after- 
noon lay  brooding  upon  the  air,  and  slanting 
sun  fell  through  the  dusty  lattices,  Hazen  asked 
the  old  man  eagerly  if  he  might  wander  through 
the  rooms. 

"As  freely,"  answered  the  old  man,  willingly, 
"as  if  you  were  the  castle's  prince." 

Thus  it  chanced  that,  after  all  the  years, 
Hazen,  though  he  was  far  from  dreaming  the 
truth,  was  once  more  roaming  through  the  rooms 
of  his  birthplace  and  treading  the  floors  that 
had  once  echoed  the  step  of  his  father,  the 
king. 

It  was  a  wonderful  place,  the  like  of  which 
Hazen  thought  he  had  never  seen  before,  save 
only  in  the  palace  of  the  father  of  the  princess. 


294  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

Above  stairs  the  rooms  had  hardly  been  dis- 
turbed since  that  old  day  of  the  hurried  flight 
of  all  his  father's  court.  There  was  a  great 
room  of  books,  as  rich  in  precious  volumes  as 
the  king's  library  which  he  already  knew,  and 
there,  though  this  he  could  not  guess,  his  own 
father  had  been  wont  to  sit  late  in  the  night, 
consulting  learned  writers  and  dreaming  of  the 
future  of  his  little  son.  There  was  the  chapel, 
where  they  had  brought  Hazen  himself  to  be 
christened,  in  the  presence  of  all  the  court; 
there  the  long  banqueting  room  to  which  he  had 
once  been  carried  so  that  the  nobles  might  pledge 
him  their  fealty,  the  arched  roof  echoing  their 
shouts.  The  throne  room,  the  council  room, 
the  state  drawing  rooms  —  through  all  these, 
with  their  dim,  dusty  hangings  and  rich,  faded 
furnishings,  Hazen  footed ;  and  at  last,  up  an- 
other stair,  he  came  to  the  private  apartments 
of  the  king  and  queen  themselves. 

Breathing  the  life  of  another  time  the  rooms 
lay,  as  if  partly  remembering  and  partly  ex- 
pecting. In  the  king's  room  was  the  hunting 
suit  that  he  had  thrown  ofT  just  before  the  at- 
tack, the  book  that  he  had  been  reading,  the 
chart  that  he  had  consulted.  In  the  queen's 


KING  295 

room  were  tarnished  golden  toilet  articles  and 
ornaments,  and  in  her  wardrobe  her  very  robes 
hung,  dusty  and  mouldering,  the  gold  thread 
and  gold  fringes  showing  black  and  sad. 

And  then  Hazen  entered  a  room  which  seemed 
to  have  been  a  child's  room  —  and  it  was  his 
room,  of  his  first  babyhood.  Something  in  him 
stirred  and  kindled,  almost  as  if  his  body  re- 
membered, though  his  mind  could  not  do  so. 
Toys  lay  scattered  about  —  tops,  a  football, 
books,  and  a  bank.  The  pillow  of  the  small 
white  bed  was  indented  as  if  from  the  pressure 
of  a  little  head,  and  a  pair  of  tiny  shoes,  one 
upright,  one  overturned,  were  on  the  floor. 
Hazen  picked  up  one  little  shoe  and  held  it 
for  a  minute  in  his  hand.  He  wondered  if  some 
of  the  little  garments  of  the  child,  whoever  he 
was,  might  not  be  in  the  hanging  room.  And  he 
opened  the  closed  door. 

The  door  led  to  a  closet  and,  as  he  had  guessed, 
little  garments  were  hanging  there.  But  it  was 
not  these  that  caught  his  eye  and  held  him 
breathless  and  spellbound  on  the  threshold. 
On  the  high  shelf  of  the  closet  stood  a  small 
glass  casket.  And  in  the  casket  was  a  little  bit 
of  live  thing  that  fluttered  piteously,  as  if  beg- 


296  WHEN   I   WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

ging  to  be  released,  and  frantic  with  joy  at  the 
coming  of  light  from  without. 

Hazen's  heart  beat  as  he  took  the  casket  in 
his  hand.  It  was  the  most  wonderful  little 
box  that  ever  he  had  seen.  And  the  little  living 
thing  was  something  like  a  fairy  and  something 
like  a  spirit  and  so  beautiful  that  it  seemed  to 
Hazen  that  he  must  have  it  for  his  own.  Some- 
thing stirred  and  kindled  in  his  mind  so  that  it 
was  almost  a  memory,  and  he  said  to  him- 
self:— 

"I  have  seen  a  casket  like  this.  I  have  had  a 
casket  like  this.  Nay,  but  the  very  earliest 
thing  that  ever  I  can  remember  is  a  casket  like 
this  from  which  no  one  knew  how  to  release 
this  little  living  spirit." 

For  the  little  spirit  was  fast  in  the  crystal 
prison,  and  if  one  broke  the  casket,  one  would 
almost  certainly  harm  the  spirit  —  but  what 
other  way  was  there  to  do  ? 

With  the  casket  in  his  hand  and  the  little 
spirit  fluttering  within,  Hazen  ran  back  below 
stairs  to  the  old  man. 

"Look!"  Hazen  cried.  "This  casket !  It  is 
from  the  closet  shelf  of  some  child's  room.  I 
remember  a  casket  such  as  this,  and  within  it 


KING  297 

a  little  living  spirit.  I  have  had  a  casket  such 
as  this  !  What  does  it  mean  ?" 

Then  the  old  man,  who  had  been  keeper  there 
when  the  castle  was  taken,  trembled  and  peered 
into  Hazen's  face. 

"Who  are  you  ?"  the  old  man  cried.  "Who 
are  you  —  and  what  is  your  name?" 

"Alas,"  said  Hazen,  sadly,  "I  was  but  the  fur- 
nace boy  to  the  king  of  a  neighbouring  country, 
and  who  I  am  I  do  not  know.  But  as  for  my 
name,  that  is  Hazen,  and  I  know  not  what  else." 

Then  the  old  man  cried  out,  and  tried  to  bow 
himself,  and  to  kiss  Hazen's  hand. 

"Prince  Hazen!"  cried  he.  "You  are  no 
other.  Ah,  God  be  praised.  You  are  the  son 
of  my  own  beloved  king." 

As  well  as  he  could  for  his  joy  and  agitation, 
the  old  man  told  Hazen  everything :  how  the 
castle  had  been  taken  by  that  king  of  a  neigh- 
bour country  —  who  did  not  know  that  neigh- 
bours are  nearly  one's  own  family  —  how  Hazen 
had  been  made  prisoner,  and  how  he  was  really 
heir  to  this  kingdom  and  to  all  its  ample  lands. 
And  how  the  magic  casket,  which  after  all  these 
years  the  old  man  now  remembered,  was  to  make 
Hazen,  and  no  other,  wise  and  really  good  and 


298  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

loved  and  beautiful,  if  only  the  little  spirit 
could  be  freed. 

"But  how  am  I  to  do  that?"  Hazen  cried. 
"For  to  break  the  casket  would  be  to  harm  the 
spirit.  And  what  other  way  is  there  to  do?" 

"Alas,"  answered  the  old  man,  "that  I  do 
not  know.  I  think  that  this  you  must  do  alone. 
As  for  me,  my  life  is  almost  spent.  And  now 
that  I  have  seen  you,  my  prince,  the  son  of  my 
dear  sovereign,  there  is  left  to  me  but  to  die 
in  peace." 

At  this,  Hazen,  remembering  how  much  he 
owed  the  wonderful  old  man  for  that  enchanted 
talk  in  the  wood,  when  he  had  taught  him  fas- 
cinating things  about  the  stars  and  the  earth 
and  the  ways  of  men,  and  had  shown  him  the 
inside  of  his  own  head  and  all  those  Selves  of 
his  and  he  their  king  if  he  would  be  so  —  re- 
membering all  these  things  Hazen  longed  to  do 
something  for  him  in  return.  But  what  could 
he  do  for  him,  he  the  heir  of  a  conquered  king- 
dom and  a  desolate  palace  ?  Yet  the  old  man 
had  been  his  father's  servant ;  and  it  was  he 
whom  the  Thought  at  the  fountain  had  bidden 
him  to  help ;  but  chiefly  Hazen's  heart  over- 
flowed with  simple  pity  and  tenderness  for  the 


KING  299 

helpless  one.  And  in  that  pity  the  Thought 
spoke  again :  — 

"Give  him  the  casket,"  it  said. 

Hazen  hesitated  —  and  in  an  instant  his 
head  was  a  chaos  of  voices.  It  was  as  if  all  the 
little  Selves,  even  those  which  had  now  long  been 
silent,  were  listening,  were  suddenly  fighting 
among  themselves  in  open  combat  to  see  what 
they  could  make  Hazen  do. 

"That  beautiful  thing!"  cried  the  Beauty 
Self.  "Keep  it  —  keep  it,  Hazen!" 

"  You  will  never  have  another  chance  at  a  for- 
tune if  you  give  it  up  !"  cried  the  Discontented 
Self. 

"If  you  throw  away  your  chance  at  a  fortune, 
your  life  will  be  a  life  of  hard  work  —  and  where 
will  your  good  time  come  in  ?"  cried  the  little 
Fun  Self,  anxiously. 

"You  will  have  only  labour  and  no  leisure  for 
learning — "  warned  the  Knowledge  Self. 

"What  of  the  Princess  Vista  ?  Do  you  not 
owe  it  to  her  to  keep  the  casket  ?  And  is  it 
not  right  that  you  should  keep  the  casket  and 
grow  wise  and  really  good  and  loved  and  beauti- 
ful ?"  they  all  argued  in  turn.  And  above 
them  all  sounded  the  terrible,  cracked  voice  of 


300  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

the  dwarf,  not  laughing  now,  but  fighting  for 
his  life  :  — 

"Fool!  Nothing  counts  but  your  chance  at 
fortune.  If  you  part  with  the  casket,  you  part 
with  me!" 

But  sweet  and  clear  through  the  clamour 
sounded  the  solemn  insisting  of  the  Thought :  — 

"Give  him  the  casket  —  give  him  the  casket, 
Hazen." 

Quickly  Hazen  knelt  beside  the  old  man,  and 
placed  the  magic  casket  in  his  hands. 

"Lo,"  said  Prince  Hazen,  "I  have  nothing  to 
give  you,  save  only  this.  But  it  may  be  that 
we  can  yet  find  some  way  to  release  the  spirit 
and  that  then  you  can  have  the  good  fortune 
that  this  will  give.  Take  the  casket  —  it  is 

,,  ".!       .''I"'!-) 

yours. 

In  an  instant,  and  noiselessly,  the  magic  cas- 
ket fell  in  pieces  in  Hazen's  hands,  and  vanished. 
And  with  a  soft  sound  of  escaping  wings  the 
little  spirit  rose  joyously  and  fluttered  toward 
Hazen,  and  alighted  on  his  breast.  There  were 
sudden  sweetness  and  light  in  all  the  place, 
and  a  happiness  that  bewildered  Hazen  —  and 
when  he  looked  again,  the  little  spirit  had  dis- 
appeared —  but  his  own  breast  was  filled  with 


KING  301 

something  new  and  marvellous,  as  if  strange 
doors  to  himself  had  opened,  and  as  if  the  spirit 
had  found  lodging  there  forever. 

In  the  clear  silence  following  upon  the  babel 
of  the  little  voices  of  all  the  mean  and  petty 
Selves,  Hazen  was  aware  of  a  voice  echoing 
within  him  like  music ;  and  he  knew  the  Thought 
now  better  than  he  knew  himself,  who  had  so 
many  Selves,  and  he  knew  that  when  it  spoke  to 
him  softly,  softly,  he  would  always  hear. 

"If  you  had  kept  the  magic  casket  for  your- 
self," it  said,  "the  spirit  would  have  drooped 
and  died.  It  was  only  by  giving  the  casket 
away  that  the  spirit  could  ever  be  free.  It  was 
only  when  the  spirit  became  yours  that  you 
could  hope  to  be  wise  and  good  and  beautiful 
and  worthy  to  be  loved.  And  now  where  is  the 
Princess  Vista's  picture-book  ?" 

All  this  time  Hazen  had  not  lost  the  picture- 
book  of  the  princess,  and  now  it  was  lying  on 
the  floor  near  where  he  was  that  night  to  have 
slept.  He  caught  it  up  and  turned  the  pages, 
and  the  old  familiar  pictures  which  the  princess 
had  shown  him  that  morning  in  the  window-seat 
made  him  long,  as  he  had  not  longed  since  he 
had  left  the  palace,  to  see  her  again. 


302  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

He  turned  to  the  old  man. 

"There  is  a  certain  princess  — "  he  began. 

"Ay,"  said  the  old  man,  gently,  "so  there  is 
always,  my  prince.  Go  to  her." 

The  mere  exquisite  presence  of  that  spirit 
in  the  room  seemed  to  have  healed  and 
invigorated  the  old  man,  and  he  had  risen  to 
his  feet,  clothed  with  a  new  strength.  He  set 
about  searching  in  the  king's  wardrobe  for  suit- 
able garments  for  his  young  prince,  and  in  a 
cedar  chest  he  found  vestments  of  somewhat  an- 
cient pattern,  but  of  so  rich  material  and  so 
delicately  made  that  the  ancient  style  did  but 
add  to  their  beauty. 

When  he  had  made  Hazen  ready,  there  was 
never  a  fairer  prince  in  the  world.  Then  the 
old  man  led  him  below  stairs  and  showed  him 
in  a  forgotten  room,  of  which  he  himself  only 
had  the  key,  a  box  containing  the  jewels  of  the 
queen,  his  mother.  So,  bearing  these,  save  one 
with  which  he  purchased  a  horse  for  his  needs, 
Prince  Hazen  set  out  for  the  palace  of  the 
princess. 

It  chanced  that  it  was  early  morning  when 
Prince  Hazen  entered  the  palace  grounds  which 
he  had  left  as  a  furnace  boy.  And  you  must 


KING  303 

know  that,  since  his  leaving,  years  had  elapsed ; 
for  though  he  had  believed  himself  to  have 
stayed  with  the  Merry  Lad  but  one  day,  and 
with  the  Bookman  but  a  few  days,  and  but  a 
little  time  on  the  hills  singing  songs,  and  in 
byways  listening  to  the  voices  of  Idleness, 
Strength,  and  the  rest,  and  lingering  in  that  fair 
home  where  the  Dwarf  had  sent  him,  yet  in 
reality  with  each  one  he  had  spent  a  year  and 
more,  so  that  now  he  was  like  someone  else. 

But  the  princess's  father's  palace  garden  was 
just  the  same,  and  Hazen  entered  by  the  east 
gate,  which  still  no  one  could  lock;  and  to  be 
back  within  the  garden  was  as  wonderful  as 
bathing  in  the  ocean  or  standing  on  a  high 
mountain  or  seeing  the  dawn.  His  horse  bore 
him  along  between  the  flowering  shrubs  and  the 
hollyhocks  ;  he  heard  the  fountains  plashing  and 
the  song-sparrows  singing  and  the  village  bells 
faintly  sounding ;  he  saw  the  goldfish  and  the 
water-lilies  gleam  in  the  pool,  and  the  horses 
cantering  about  the  paddock.  And  all  at  once 
it  seemed  to  him  that  the  day  was  his  and  the 
world  was  his,  to  do  with  them  what  he 
would. 

So  he  galloped  round  the  east  wing  of  the 


3o4  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

palace,  and  looked  up  eagerly  and  longingly 
toward  the  princess's  window.  And  there  stood 
the  Princess  Vista,  watching.  But  when  she 
saw  him,  she  drew  far  back  as  if  she  were  afraid. 
And  Prince  Hazen,  as  he  bowed  low  in  his  saddle, 
could  think  of  no  word  to  say  to  her  that  seemed 
a  word  to  be  said.  He  could  only  cry  up  to 
her  :- 

"Oh,  Princess  Vista.  Come  down  !  Come 
down  !  Come  down  —  and  teach  me  about  the 
whole  world." 

He  galloped  straight  to  the  great  entrance 
way,  and  leaped  from  his  horse,  and  no  one 
questioned  him,  for  they  all  knew  by  his  look 
that  he  came  with  great  authority.  And  he 
went  to  the  king's  library,  to  that  room  which 
was  as  wide  as  a  lawn  and  as  high  as  a  tree,  and 
filled  with  mystery,  and  waited  for  her,  knowing 
that  she  would  come. 

She  entered  the  room  almost  timidly,  as,  once 
upon  a  time,  the  little  furnace  boy  had  entered. 
And  when  she  saw  him  waiting  for  her  before 
the  window-seat,  nothing  could  have  exceeded 
her  terror  and  her  wonder  and  her  delight.  And 
now  her  eyes  were  looking  down,  and  she  did 
not  ask  him  what  he  was  doing  there. 


KING  305 

"Oh,  Princess  Vista,"  he  said  softly,  "I  love 
you.  I  want  to  be  loved  !  " 

"Who  are  you  —  that  want  so  much?"  the 
princess  asked  —  but  her  eyes  knew,  and  her 
smile  knew. 

"Someone  who  has  brought  back  your  pic- 
ture-book," said  Prince  Hazen.  "I  pray  you, 
teach  it  to  me  again." 

"Nay,"  said  the  princess,  softly,  "I  have 
taught  you  a  wrong  thing.  For  I  have  taught 
you  that  there  are  many  suns.  And  instead 
there  is  only  one  sun,  and  it  brings  only  one  day 
—  and  that  day  is  this  day  !" 

It  was  so  that  she  welcomed  him  back. 

They  went  to  the  king,  her  father,  and  told 
him  everything.  And  when  he  knew  that  his 
daughter  loved  Prince  Hazen,  he  restored  his 
kingdom  to  him,  and  named  him  his  own  suc- 
cessor. And  Hazen  was  crowned  king,  with 
much  magnificence,  and  his  father's  courtiers, 
who  were  living,  were  returned  to  his  court,  and 
that  wise,  wonderful  old  man,  who  had  shown 
him  the  inside  of  his  own  head,  was  given  a  place 
of  honour  near  the  king. 

But  on  the  day  of  the  coronation,  louder  than 
the  shouts  of  the  people,  and  nearer  even  than 


306  WHEN   I   WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

the  voice  of  his  queen,  sounded  that  voice  of 
the   wise    and    good   Self,   which   was    but   the 
Thought,  deep  within  the  soul  of  the  king :  — 
"Hail  to  Hazen  — King  of  All  His  Selves  !" 


XVI 

THE    WALK 

"WHAT'S  the  latest  you  ever  stayed  up?" 
Delia  demanded  of  Mary  Elizabeth  and  me. 

"I  sat  up  till  ten  o'clock  once  when  my  aunt 
was  coming,"  I  boasted. 

"Once  I  was  on  a  train  that  got  in  at  twelve 
o'clock,"  said  Mary  Elizabeth,  thoughtfully, 
"but  I  was  asleep  till  the  train  got  in.  Would 
you  call  that  sitting  up  till  twelve  o'clock  ?" 

On  the  whole,  Delia  and  I  decided  that  you 
could  not  impartially  call  it  so,  and  Mary  Eliza- 
beth conceded  the  point.  Her  next  best  ex- 
perience was  dated  at  only  half  past  nine. 

"I  was  up  till  eleven  o'clock  lots  of  times." 
Delia  threw  out  carelessly. 

We  regarded  her  with  awe.  Here  was 
another  glory  for  her  list.  Already  we  knew 
that  she  had  slept  in  a  sleeping  car,  patted  an 
elephant,  and  swum  four  strokes. 

"What's  the  earliest  you  ever  got  up  ?" 
Delia  pursued. 

307 


3o8  WHEN   I   WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

Here,  too,  we  proved  to  have  nothing  to  com- 
pete with  the  order  of  Delia's  risings.  However, 
this  might  yet  be  mended.  There  seemed  never 
to  be  the  same  household  ban  on  getting  up 
early  that  there  was  on  staying  up  late. 

"Let's  get  up  some  morning  before  four 
o'clock  and  take  a  walk,"  I  suggested. 

"My  brother  got  up  at  half  past  three  once," 
Mary  Elizabeth  announced. 

"Well,"  I  said,  "let's  get  up  at  half  past 
three.  Let's  do  it  to-morrow  morning." 

Mary  Elizabeth  and  I  had  stretched  a  string 
from  a  little  bell  at  the  head  of  her  bed  to  a 
little  bell  at  the  head  of  my  bed.  This  the 
authorities  permitted  us  to  ring  so  long  as  there 
was  discernible  a  light,  or  any  other  fixed  signal, 
at  the  two  windows ;  and  also  after  seven 
o'clock  in  the  morning.  But  of  course  the  time 
when  we  both  longed  most  frantically  to  pull 
the  cord  was  when  either  woke  at  night  and 
lay  alone  in  the  darkness.  In  the  night  I  used 
to  put  my  hand  on  the  string  and  think  how,  by 
a  touch,  I  could  waken  Mary  Elizabeth,  just 
as  if  she  were  in  my  room,  just  as  if  we  were 
hand  in  hand.  I  used  to  think  what  joy  it 
would  be  if  all  little  children  on  the  same  side 


THE  WALK  309 

of  the  ocean  were  similarly  provided,  and  if  no 
one  interfered.  A  little  code  of  signals  arose 
in  my  mind,  a  kind  of  secret  code  which  should 
be  heard  by  nobody  save  those  for  whom  they 
were  intended  —  for  sick  children,  for  frightened 
children,  for  children  just  having  a  bad  dream, 
for  motherless  children,  for  cold  or  tired  or  lonely 
children,  for  all  children  sleepless  for  any  cause. 
I  used  to  wish  that  little  signals  like  this  could 
be  rung  for  all  unhappy  children,  night  or  day. 
Why,  with  all  their  inventions,  had  not  grown 
people  invented  this  ?  Of  course  they  would 
never  make  things  any  harder  for  us  than  they 
could  help  (we  thought).  But  why  had  they 
not  done  this  thing  to  make  things  easier  ? 

The  half  past  three  proposal  was  unanimously 
vetoed  within  doors :  We  might  rise  at  five 
o'clock,  no  earlier.  This  somewhat  took  edge 
from  the  adventure,  but  we  accepted  it  as  next 
best.  Delia  was  to  be  waked  by  an  alarm  clock. 
Mary  Elizabeth  and  I  felt  that,  by  some  mys- 
terious means,  we  could  waken  ourselves ;  and 
we  two  agreed  to  call  each  other,  so  to  say,  by 
the  bells. 

When  I  did  waken,  it  was  still  quite  dark,  and 
when  I  had  found  light  and  a  clock,  I  saw  that  it 


310  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

was  only  a  little  after  three.  As  I  had  gone  to 
bed  at  seven,  I  was  wide  awake  at  three ;  and 
it  occurred  to  me  that  I  would  stay  up  till  time 
to  call  Mary  Elizabeth.  This  would  be  at  half 
past  four.  Besides,  stopping  up  then  presented 
an  undoubted  advantage  :  It  enabled  me  to  skip 
my  bath.  Clearly  I  could  not,  with  courtesy, 
risk  rousing  the  household  with  many  waters. 

I  dressed  in  the  dark,  braided  my  own  hair 
in  the  dark  — -  by  now  I  could  do  this  save  that 
the  plait,  when  I  brought  it  over  my  shoulder, 
still  would  assume  a  jog  —  and  sat  down  by 
the  open  window.  It  was  one  of  the  large  nights 
.  .  .  for  some  nights  are  undeniably  larger  than 
others.  When  I  was  on  the  street  with  my  hand 
in  a  grown-up  hand,  the  night  was  invariably 
bounded  by  trees,  fences,  houses,  lawns,  horse- 
blocks, and  the  like.  But  when  I  stepped  to  the 
door  alone  at  night,  I  always  noticed  that  it 
stretched  endlessly  away.  So  it  was  now.  I 
could  slip  out  the  screen,  as  I  had  discovered 
earlier  in  the  season  when  I  had  felt  the  need  of 
feeding  a  nest  of  house-wrens  in  the  bird-house 
below  my  sill  —  and  I  took  out  the  screen  now, 
and  leaned  out  in  the  darkness.  The  stars 
seemed  very  near  —  I  am  always  glad  that  I 


THE  WALK  311 

did  not  know  how  far  away  they  are,  for  they 
looked  so  friendly  near.  If  only,  I  used  to  think, 
the  clouds  would  form  behind  the  stars  and  leave 
them  all  shiny  and  blurry  bright  in  the  rain. 
What  were  they  ?  How  came  they  to  be  in  our 
world's  sky  ? 

I  suppose  that  I  had  been  ten  minutes  at  the 
window  that  morning  when  I  saw  a  light  briefly 
flash  in  Mary  Elizabeth's  window.  Instantly, 
I  softly  pulled  my  bell.  She  answered,  and  then 
I  could  see  her,  dim  in  the  window  once  more 
dark. 

"It  isn't  time  yet!"  she  called  softly  —  our 
houses  were  very  near. 

"Not  yet,"  I  answered,  "but  I'm  going  to 
stay  up." 

Mary  Elizabeth  briefly  considered  this. 

"What  for  ?"  she  propounded. 

I  had  not  thought  what  for. 

"To  —  why  to  be  up  early,"  I  answered  con- 
fidently. "I'm  all  dressed." 

The  defence  must  have  carried  conviction. 

"I  will,  too,"  Mary  Elizabeth  concluded. 

She  disappeared  and,  after  a  suitable  time, 
reappeared  at  the  window,  presumably  fully 
clothed.  I  detached  the  bell  from  my  bed  and 


3i2  WHEN  I   WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

sat  with  it  in  my  hand,  and  I  found  afterward 
that  she  had  done  the  same.  From  time  to  time 
we  each  gave  the  cord  a  slight,  ecstatic  pull. 
The  whole  mystery  of  the  great  night  lay  in 
those  gentle  signals. 

It  is  unfortunate  to  have  to  confess  that,  after 
a  time,  the  mystery  palled.  But  it  did.  Stars, 
wide,  dark,  moonless  lawn,  empty  street,  all 
these  blurred  and  merged  in  a  single  impression. 
This  was  one  of  chilliness.  Even  calling  through 
the  night  at  intervals,  and  at  the  imminent  risk 
of  being  heard,  lost  its  charm,  because  after  a 
little  while  there  was  nothing  left  to  call.  "How 
still  it  is  !"  and  ''Nobody  but  us  is  up  in  town," 
and  "Won't  Delia  be  mad  ?"  lose  their  edge 
when  repeated  for  about  the  third  time  each. 
Moreover,  I  was  obliged  to  face  a  new  foe :  I 
was  getting  sleepy. 

Without  undue  disturbance  of  the  cord,  I 
managed  to  consult  the  clock  once  more.  It 
was  five  minutes  of  four.  There  remained  more 
than  an  hour  to  wait !  It  was  I  who  capitulated. 

"Mary  Elizabeth,"  I  said  waveringly,  "would 
you  care  very  much  if  I  was  to  lay  down  just  a 
little  to  rest  my  eyes  ?" 

"No,  I  wouldn't  care,"  came  with  significant 
alacrity.  "I  will,  too." 


THE  WALK  313 

I  lay  down  on  the  covers  and  pulled  a  com- 
forter about  me.  As  I  drifted  off  I  remember 
wondering  how  the  dark  ever  kept  awake  all 
night.  For  it  was  awake.  To  know  that  one 
had  only  to  listen. 

We  all  had  a  signal  which  we  called  a  "trill," 
made  by  tongue  and  teeth,  with  almost  the 
force  of  a  boy  and  a  blade  of  grass.  This,  pro- 
duced furiously  beneath  my  window,  was  what 
wakened  me.  Delia  stood  between  the  two 
houses,  engaged  with  such  absorption  in  manu- 
facturing this  sound  that  she  failed  to  see  me  at 
the  window.  A  moment  after  I  had  hailed  her, 
Mary  Elizabeth  appeared  at  her  window,  look- 
ing distinctly  distraught. 

Seeing  us  fully  dressed,  Delia's  indignation 
increased.  m 

"Why  didn't  you  leave  me  know  you  were 
up  ?"  she  demanded  shrilly.  "It's  a  quarter 
past  five.  I  been  out  here  fifteen  minutes." 

We  were  assuring  her  guiltily  that  we  would 
be  right  down  when  there  came  an  interruption. 

"Delia/" 

Delia's  father,  in  a  gray  bath-robe,  stood  at 
an  upper  window  of  their  house  across  the  street. 

"What  do  you  mean  by  waking  up  the  whole 


3i4  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

neighbourhood  ?"  he  inquired,  not  without 
reason.  "Now  I  want  you  to  come  home." 

"  We  were  going  walking,"  Delia  reminded  him. 

"You  are  coming  home  at  once  after  this 
proceeding,"  Delia's  father  assured  her.  "No 
more  words  please,  Delia." 

He  disappeared  from  the  window.  Delia 
moved  reluctantly  across  the  street.  As  she 
went,  she  threw  a  resentful  glance  at  Mary 
Elizabeth  and  me,  each. 

"I'm  sorry,  Delia  !"  we  called  softly  in  chorus. 
She  made  no  reply.  Mary  Elizabeth  and  I  were 
left  staring  at  each  other  down  our  bell-rope,  no 
longer  taut,  but  limp,  as  we  had  left  it  earlier. 
.  .  .  Even  in  that  stress,  the  unearthly  sweet- 
ness of  the  morning  smote  me  —  the  early  sun, 
the  early  shadows.  It  all  looked  so  exactly  as 
if  it  had  expected  you  not  to  be  looking. 
This  is  the  look  of  outdoors  that,  now,  will  most 
quickly  take  me  back. 

"It  wouldn't  be  fair  to  go  walking  without 
Delia,"  said  Mary  Elizabeth,  abruptly  and 
positively. 

"No,"  I  agreed,  with  equal  decision.  Then, 
"We  might  as  well  go  back  to  bed,"  I  pursued 
the  subject  further. 

"Let's,"  said  Mary  Elizabeth. 


XVII 

THE    GREAT   BLACK   HUSH 

ON  that  special  night,  which  somehow  I 
remember  with  tenderness,  I  sometimes  think 
now  —  all  these  years  after  —  that  I  should 
like  to  have  been  with  those  solitary,  sleepy 
little  figures,  trying  so  hard  to  get  near  to  mys- 
tery. I  should  think  that  a  Star  Story  must 
have  come  in  anybody's  head  to  tell  them.  Like 
this :  — 

Once,  when  it  didn't  matter  to  anybody 
whether  you  were  late  or  early,  or  quick  or  slow, 
not  only  because  there  wasn't  anybody  and 
there  wasn't  any  you,  but  because  it  was  back 
in  the  beginning  when  there  were  no  lates  and 
earlies  and  quicks  and  slows,  then  things  began 
to  happen  in  the  middle  of  the  Great  Black 
Hush  which  was  all  there  was  to  everything. 

The  Great  Black  Hush  reached  all  the  way 
around  the  Universe  and  in  directions  without 
any  names,  and  it  was  huge  and  humble  and 

315 


316  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

superior  and  helpless  and  mighty  and  in  other 
ways  it  was  very  much  indeed  like  a  man.  And 
as  there  was  nothing  to  do,  the  Great  Black  Hush 
was  bored  past  extinction  and  almost  to  crea- 
tion. For  there  wasn't  anything  else  about 
save  only  the  Wind,  and  the  Wind  would  have 
nothing  whatever  to  do  with  him  and  always 
blew  right  by. 

Now,  inasmuch  as  everything  that  is  now 
was  then  going  to  be  created,  it  was  all  waiting 
somewhere  to  be  created ;  and  nothing  is  clearer 
than  that.  Lines  and  colours  and  musics  and 
tops  and  blocks  and  flame  and  Noah's  arks  and 
mechanical  toys  and  mountains  and  paints 
and  planets  and  air  and  water  and  alphabets 
and  jumping-jacks,  all,  all,  were  waiting  to  be 
created,  and  among  them  waited  people.  I  can- 
not tell  you  where  they  waited,  because  there 
was  no  where;  but  they  were  waiting,  as  any- 
body can  see,  for  time  to  be  begun. 

Among  the  people  who  were  waiting  about 
was  one  special  baby,  who  was  just  big  enough 
to  reach  out  after  everything  and  to  try  to  put 
it  in  his  mouth,  and  they  had  an  awful  time  with 
him.  He  put  his  little  hands  on  coloured  things 
and  on  flame  things  and  on  air  and  on  water  and 


"TO    SEE    WHAT   RUNNING   AWAY    IS    REALLY    LIKE.3 


THE  GREAT  BLACK  HUSH  317 

on  musics,  and  he  wanted  to  know  what  they 
all  were,  and  he  tried  to  put  them  in  his  mouth. 
And  his  mother  was  perfectly  distracted,  and 
she  told  him  so,  openly. 

"Special  Baby,"  she  said  to  him  openly,  "I 
don't  see  why  every  hair  in  my  head  is  not  pure 
white.  And  if  you  don't  stop  making  so  much 
trouble,  I'll  run  away." 

"Run  away,"  thought  the  Special  Baby. 
"Now  what  thing  is  that  ?" 

And  he  stretched  out  his  little  hand  to  see, 
but  there  wasn't  anything  there,  and  he  couldn't 
put  it  in  his  mouth ;  so  without  letting  anybody 
know,  he  started  off  all  by  himself  to  see  what 
running  away  is  really  like. 

He  ran  and  he  ran,  past  lines  and  colours  and 
blocks  and  flame  and  music  and  paint  and 
planets,  all  waiting  about  to  begin,  till  he  began 
to  notice  the  Great  Black  Hush,  where  it  lay  all 
humble  and  important,  and  bored  past  extinc- 
tion and  almost  to  creation. 

"What  thing  is  that?"  thought  the  Special 
Baby,  and  put  out  his  little  hand  to  get  it  and 
put  it  in  his  mouth. 

So  he  touched  the  Great  Black  Hush,  and  under 
the  little  hand  the  Great  Black  Hush  felt  as 


318  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

never  he  had  felt  before.  For  the  Special  Baby's 
hand  was  soft  and  wandering  and  most  clinging 
—  any  General  Baby's  hand  will  give  you  the 
idea  if  you  care  to  try.  And  it  made  it  seem  as 
if  there  were  something  to  do. 

All  through  his  huge,  helpless,  superior,  and 
mighty  being  the  Great  Black  Hush  was  stirred, 
and  when  the  Special  Baby  was  frightened  and 
would  have  gone  back,  the  Great  Black  Hush  did 
the  most  astonishing  things  to  try  to  keep  him. 
He  plaited  the  darkness  up  like  a  ruffle  and 
waved  it  like  a  flag  and  opened  it  like  a  flower  and 
shut  it  like  a  door  and  poured  it  about  like  water, 
all  to  keep  the  Special  Baby  amused.  But 
though  the  Special  Baby  tried  to  put  most  of 
these  and  all  the  dark  in  his  mouth,  still  on  the 
whole  he  was  badly  frightened  and  wanted  his 
mother,  and  he  began  to  cry  to  show  how  much 
he  wanted  her.  And  then  the  Great  Black  Hush 
was  at  his  wits'  end. 

"Now,  who  is  there  to  be  the  mother  of  this 
Special  Baby  ?"  he  cried  in  despair,  for  there 
wasn't  anything  else  anywhere  around,  save 
only  the  Wind,  and  the  Wind  always  blew  right 
by.  But  the  blowing  by  must  have  been  because 
the  Great  Black  Hush  had  never  spoken  before, 


THE  GREAT  BLACK  HUSH  319 

for  these  were  the  first  words  that  ever  he  had 
said ;  and  the  Wind,  on  hearing  them,  stopped 
still  as  a  stone,  and  listened. 

"Would  I  do  ?"  the  Wind  asked,  and  the  Great 
Black  Hush  was  so  astonished  that  he  almost 
dropped  the  Special  Baby. 

"Would  I  do  ?"  asked  the  Wind  again,  and 
made  the  dark  like  blown  garments  and  like 
long,  blown  hair  and  tender  motions,  such  as 
women  make.  And  she  took  the  Special  Baby 
in  her  arms  and  rocked  him  as  gently  as  boughs, 
so  that  he  laughed  with  delight  and  tried  to 
put  the  wind  in  his  mouth  and  finally  went  to 
sleep,  with  his  beads  on. 

"Now  what'll  we  do  ?"  said  the  Great  Black 
Hush,  hanging  about,  all  helpless  and  mighty. 

"We  can  get  along  without  a  cradle,"  said 
the  Wind,  "because  I  will  rock  him  to  sleep  in 
my  arms."  (This  was  before  time  began  and 
before  they  laid  them  down  to  go  to  sleep  alone 
in  a  dark  room.)  "But  we  ought,  we  ought" 
she  added,  "to  have  something  for  him  to  play 
with  when  he  wakes  up."  (This  was  before 
time  began  and  before  anybody  ate.  But  they 
always  played.  That  came  first.) 

"  If  he  had  something  to  play  with,  what  would 


320  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

that  look  like  ?"  asked  the  Great  Black  Hush, 
all  helpless. 

"It  musn't  have  points  like  scissors,  or  ends 
like  string,  and  the  paint  mustn't  come  off,  I 
think,"  said  the  Wind,  "it  ought  to  look  like 
a  shining  ball." 

"By  my  distance,"  said  the  Great  Black  Hush, 
all  mighty,  "that's  what  it  shall  look  like." 

Then  he  began  to  make  a  plaything,  and  he 
worked  all  over  him  and  all  over  everywhere  at 
the  fashioning.  I  don't  know  how  he  did  it, 
because  I  wasn't  there,  and  I  can't  reckon  how 
long  it  took  him,  because  there  wasn't  any  time, 
but  I  know  some  things  about  it  all,  and  one  is 
that  he  finally  got  it  done. 

"Look  !"  the  Great  Black  Hush  cried  to  the 
Wind,  —  for  she  paid  more  attention  to  the 
Special  Baby  now  than  she  did  to  him.  And 
when  she  looked,  there  hung  in  the  sky,  a  great, 
enormous,  shining  ball. 

"That's  big  enough  so  he  can't  get  it  in  his 
mouth,"  she  said  approvingly.  "It's  really 
ginginatic." 

"You  mean  gigantic,  dear,"  said  the  Great 
Black  Hush,  all  superior.  But  the  Wind  didn't 
care  because  words  hadn't  been  used  long  enough 


THE  GREAT  BLACK  HUSH  321 

to  fit  closely,  and  besides  he  had  said  "  dear  " 
and  she  knew  what  that  meant.  "  Dear  "  came 
before  "gigantic." 

"Now  wake  him  up,"  said  the  Great  Black 
Hush,  "to  play  with  it." 

But  this  the  Wind  would  by  no  means  do. 
She  said  the  Special  Baby  must  have  his  sleep 
out  or  he'd  be  cross.  And  the  Great  Black  Hush 
wondered  however  she  knew  that,  and  he  went 
away,  all  humble,  and  amused  himself  making 
more  playthings  till  the  baby  woke  up.  And 
all  the  playthings  looked  like  shining  balls, 
because  that  was  the  only  kind  of  plaything 
the  Wind  had  told  him  to  make  and  he  didn't 
know  whether  anything  else  would  do.  So  he 
made  them  by  the  thousands  and  started  them 
all  swinging  because  he  thought  the  Special 
Baby  would  like  them  to  do  that. 

By-and-by  —  there  was  always  by-and-by  be- 
fore there  was  any  time,  and  that  is  why  so 
many  people  prefer  it  —  when  he  couldn't  stay 
any  longer,  he  went  back  where  the  Wind  waited, 
cuddling  the  Special  Baby  close. 

"Sh-h-h-h,"  said  the  Wind,  but  she  was  too 
late,  and  the  Special  Baby  woke  up,  with  wide 
eyes  and  a  smile  in  them. 


322  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE   GIRL 

But  he  wasn't  cross.  For  the  minute  he 
opened  his  eyes  he  saw  all  the  thousands  of 
shining  balls  hanging  in  the  darkness  and  swing- 
ing, swinging,  and  he  crowed  with  delight  and 
stretched  out  his  little  hands  for  them,  but  they 
were  so  big  he  couldn't  put  them  in  his  mouth 
and  so  he  might  reach  out  all  he  pleased. 

"Ho,"  said  the  Great  Black  Hush,  "now 
everything  is  as  it  never  was  before." 

But  the  Wind  sighed  a  little. 

"I  wish  everything  were  more  so,"  she  said. 
"I  ought  to  have  a  place  to  take  the  Special 
Baby  and  make  his  clothes  and  mend  his  socks 
and  tie  on  his  shoes  and  rub  his  little  back. 
Also,  I  want  to  learn  a  lullaby,  and  this  is  so 
public." 

Then  the  Great  Black  Hush  thought  and 
thought,  and  remembered  that  away  back  on 
the  Outermost  Way  and  beneath  the  Wild 
Wing  of  Things,  there  was  a  tidy  little  place 
that  might  be  just  the  thing.  It  was  not  up  to 
date,  because  there  wasn't  any  date,  but  still 
he  thought  it  might  be  just  the  thing. 

"  By  the  welkin,"  he  said,  "  I  know  a  place  that 
is  the  place.  I'll  go  and  sweep  it  out." 

"Not  so  fast,"  said  the  Wind,  gently.     "I  go 


THE  GREAT  BLACK  HUSH  323 

also.  I  want  to  be  sure  that  there  are  enough 
closets  — "  or  whatever  would  have  corresponded 
to  that  before  there  was  any  Modern  at  all. 

So  the  three  went  away  together  and  groped 
about  on  the  Outermost  Way  and  beneath  the 
Wild  Wing  of  Things,  and  there  the  Wind  swept 
it  out  tidily  and  there  they  made  their  home. 
And  when  it  was  all  done,  —  which  took  a  great 
while  because  the  Wind  kept  wanting  additions 
put  on,  —  they  came  out  and  sat  at  the  door  of 
the  place,  the  Great  Black  Hush  and  the  Wind 
and  the  Special  Baby  between. 

And  as  they  did  that  a  wonderful  thing  was 
true.  For  now  that  the  Great  Black  Hush  had 
withdrawn  to  his  new  home,  lo,  all  the  swinging 
plaything  balls  were  shining  through  space,  and 
there  was  light.  And  the  man  and  the  woman 
and  the  child  at  the  door  of  the  first  home  looked 
in  one  another's  faces.  And  the  man  and  the 
woman  were  afraid  of  the  light  and  their  look 
clung  each  to  the  other's  in  that  fear;  but  the 
Special  Baby  stretched  out  his  little  hands  and 
tried  to  put  the  light  in  his  mouth. 

"Don't,  dear,"  said  the  woman,  and  her 
voice  sounded  quite  natural. 

"Pay  attention  to  me  and  not  to  the  Baby," 


324  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

said  the  man,  and  his  voice  sounded  quite  natural, 
and  very  mighty,  so  that  the  woman  obeyed  — 
until  the  Special  Baby  wanted  her  again. 

And  that  was  when   she  made  her  lullaby, 
and  it  was  the  first  song  :  — 

WIND    SONG* 

Horn  of  the  morning  ! 

And  the  little  night  pipings  fail. 

The  day  is  launched  like  a  hollow  ship 

With  the  sun  for  a  sail. 

The  way  is  wide  and  blue  and  lone 

With  all  its  miles  inviolate 

Save  for  the  swinging  stars  we've  sown 

And  a  thistle  of  cloud  remote  and  blown. 

Oh,  I  passion  for  something  nearer  than  these  ! 

How  shall  I  know  that  this  live  thing  is  I 

With  only  the  morning  for  proof  and  the  sky  ? 

I  long  for  a  music  more  soft  to  its  keys, 

For  a  touch  that  shall  teach  me  the  new  sureties. 

Give  me  some  griefs  and  some  loyalties 

And  a  child's  mouth  on  my  own  ! 

Lullaby,  lullaby, 

Babe  of  the  world,  swing  high, 

Swing  low. 

*  Reproduced  by  permission  of  The  Craftsman. 


THE  GREAT  BLACK  HUSH  325 

I  am  a  mother  you  never  may  know, 

But  oh 

And  oh,  how  long  the  wind  will  know  you, 

With  lullabies  for  the  dead  night  through. 

Babe  of  the  earth,  as  I  blow  .  .  . 

Swing  high, 

To  touch  at  the  sky, 

And  at  last  lie  low. 

Lullaby.  .  .  . 

But  meanwhile  the  Special  Baby's  real  mother 
—  the  one  who  had  told  him  about  running 
away  —  was  hunting  and  hunting  and  hunting 
for  him  and  going  nearly  distracted  and  expect- 
ing every  hair  in  her  head  to  turn  pure  white. 
She  went  about  among  all  the  rest,  asking  and 
calling  and  wanting  to  know,  and  finally  she 
made  up  her  mind  that  she  would  not  stay  where 
she  was,  but  that  she  would  run  away  and  hunt 
for  him.  And  she  did.  And  when  all  the  things 
that  were  waiting  to  be  born  heard  about  it, 
there  was  no  holding  them  back  either.  So  out 
they  came,  lines  and  colours  and  musics  and 
tops  and  blocks  and  flame  and  Noah's  arks  and 
mechanical  toys  and  mountains  and  planets 
and  paints  and  air  and  water  and  alphabets 


326  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

and  jumping-jacks,  all,  all  came  out  in  the  wake 
of  the  lost  Special  Baby.  And  some  came  early 
and  some  came  late,  some  hurried  and  some  hung 
back.  And  among  all  these  came  people,  and 
many  and  many  of  the  to-be-born  things  were 
hidden  in  peoples'  hearts  and  did  not  appear 
till  long  after ;  and  this  was  true  of  some  things 
which  I  have  not  mentioned  at  all,  and  of  some 
that  have  not  appeared  even  yet.  But  some 
people  did  not  bring  anything  in  their  hearts, 
and  they  merely  observed  that  it  was  a  shameful 
waste,  so  many  shining  balls  swinging  about 
and  only  the  Special  Baby  to  play  with  them, 
and  he  evidently  eternally  lost. 

But  the  Special  Baby's  real  mother  didn't 
say  a  word.  She  only  ran  and  ran  on,  asking 
and  calling  and  wanting  to  know.  And  at  last 
she  came  to  the  Outermost  Way  and  near  the 
Wild  Wing  of  Things,  and  the  Special  Baby 
heard  her  coming.  And  when  he  heard  that, 
he  made  his  choicest  coo-noise  in  his  throat  and 
he  stretched  out  his  arms  to  his  real  mother  that 
he  was  used  to. 

And  when  his  real  mother  heard  the  coo-noise, 
she  brushed  aside  the  Wild  Wing  of  Things  and 
took  him  in  her  arms  —  and  she  never  saw  the 


THE  GREAT  BLACK  HUSH  327 

Wind  and  the  Great  Black  Hush  at  all,  because 
they  are  that  kind.  So  she  carried  the  Special 
Baby  off,  kicking  and  crowing  and  catching  at 
the  swinging,  shining  balls  —  but  they  were  too 
big  to  put  in  his  mouth  so  there  was  no  danger 
—  and  she  hunted  up  a  place  where  she  could 
make  his  clothes  and  mend  his  socks  and  tie 
on  his  shoes  and  rub  his  little  back.  But  about 
them  all  things  were  going  on,  and  everybody 
else  was  doing  the  same  thing,  so  nobody  noticed. 

Then,  all  alone  before  their  home  on  the  Out- 
ermost Way  and  beneath  the  Wild  Wing  of 
Things  that  was  all  brushed  aside,  the  Great  Black 
Hush  and  the  Wind  looked  at  each  other.  And 
their  look  clung,  as  when  they  had  first  found 
light,  and  they  were  afraid.  For  now  all  space 
was  glowing  and  shining  with  swinging  balls, 
and  all  the  things  were  being  born  and  making 
homes,  and  time  was  rushing  by  so  fast  that  it 
awed  them  who  had  never  seen  such  a  thing 
before. 

"What  have  we  done  ?"  demanded  the  Great 
Black  Hush. 

But  the  Wind  was  not  so  much  concerned 
with  that.  She  only  grieved  and  grieved  for 
the  Special  Baby.  And  the  Great  Black  Hush 


328  WHEN   I  WAS   A  LITTLE  GIRL 

comforted  her,  and  I  think  he  comforts  her  unto 
this  day. 

Only  at  night.  Then,  as  you  know,  the  Great 
Black  Hush  comes  from  the  Outermost  Way  and 
fills  the  air,  and  with  him  often  and  often  comes 
the  Wind.  And  together  they  wander  among 
all  the  shining  balls  —  you  will  know  this,  if 
you  listen,  on  many  a  night  —  and  together  they 
look  for  the  Special  Baby.  But  he  has  grown  up, 
long  and  long  ago,  only  he  still  stretches  out 
his  hands  to  everything,  for  he  is  the  way  he  was 
made. 


XVIII 

THE   DECORATION    OF    INDEPENDENCE 

THAT  year  we  celebrated  Fourth  of  July  in 
the  Wood  Yard. 

The  town  had  decided  not  to  have  a  celebra- 
tion, though  we  did  not  know  who  had  done  the 
actual  deciding,  and  this  we  used  to  talk  about. 
•  "How  can  the  town  decide  anything  ?"  Delia 
asked  sceptically.  "When  does  it  do  it?" 

"Why,"  said  Margaret  Amelia  —  to  whom, 
her  father  being  a  judge,  we  always  turned  to 
explain  matters  of  state,  "  its  principal  folks  say 
so." 

"Who  are  its  principal  folks  ?"  I  demanded. 

"Why,"  said  Margaret  Amelia,  "I  should 
think  you  could  tell  that.  They  have  the  stores 
and  offices  and  live  in  the  residence  part." 

I  pondered  this,  for  most  of  the  folk  in  the 
little  town  did  neither  of  these  things. 

"Why  don't  they  have  another  Fourth  of 
July  for  the  rest,  then,"  I  suggested,  "and  leave 
them  settle  on  their  own  celebration  ? " 

329 


330  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

Margaret  Amelia  looked  shocked. 

"I  guess  you  don't  know  much  about  the 
Decoration  of  Independence,"  said  she. 

The  Decoration  of  Independence  —  we  all 
called  it  this  —  was,  then,  to  go  by  without  at- 
tention because  the  Town  said  so. 

"The  Town,"  said  Mary  Elizabeth,  dreamily, 
"the  Town.  It  sounds  like  somebody  tall, 
very  high,  and  pointed  at  the  top,  with  the  rest 
of  her  dark  and  long  and  flowy  —  don't  it?" 

"City,"  she  and  I  were  agreed,  sounded  like 
somebody  light  and  sitting  down  with  her  skirts 
spread  out. 

"Village"  sounded  like  a  little  soft  hollow, 
not  much  of  any  colour,  with  a  steeple  to  it. 

"I  like  'Town'  best,"  Mary  Elizabeth  said. 
"It  sounds  more  like  a  mother-woman.  'City' 
sounds  like  a  lady-woman.  And  'Village' 
sounds  like  a  grandma-woman.  I  like  'Town' 
best." 

"What  I  want  to  do,"  Margaret  Amelia  said 
restlessly,  "is  to  spend  my  Fourth  of  July  dollar. 
I  had  a  Fourth  of  July  dollar  ever  since  Christ- 
mas. It's  no  fun  spending  it  with  no  folks  and 
bands  and  wagons." 

"I've  got  my  birthday  dollar  yet,"  I  contrib- 


THE  DECORATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE    331 

uted.  "If  I  spent  it  for  Fourth  of  July,  I'd  be 
glad  of  it,  but  if  I  spend  it  for  anything  else, 
I'll  want  it  back." 

"I  had  a  dollar,"  said  Calista,  gloomily,  "but 
I  used  a  quarter  of  it  up  on  the  circus.  Now  I'm 
glad  I  did.  I  wish't  I'd  stayed  to  the  side- 
show." 

"Stitchy  Branchitt  says,"  Betty  offered, 
"that  the  boys  are  all  going  to  Poynette  and 
spend  their  money  there.  Poynette's  got  ex- 


ercises." 


Oh,  the  boys  would  get  a  Fourth.  Trust 
them.  But  what  about  us  ?  We  could  not  go 
to  Poynette.  We  could  not  rise  at  three  A.M. 
and  fire  off  fire-crackers.  No  fascinating  itin- 
erant hucksters  would  come  the  way  of  a  town 
that  held  no  celebration.  We  had  nowhere  to 
spend  our  substance,  and  to  do  that  was  to  us 
what  Fourth  of  July  implied. 

The  New  Boy  came  wandering  by,  eating 
something.  Boys  were  always  eating  something 
that  looked  better  than  anything  we  saw  in  the 
candy-shop.  Where  did  they  get  it  ?  This 
that  he  had  was  soft  and  pink  and  chewy,  and 
it  rapidly  disappeared  as  he  approached  us. 

Margaret   Amelia   Rodman   threw   back   her 


332  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

curls  and  flashed  a  sudden  radiant  smile  at  the 
New  Boy.  She  became  quite  another  person 
from  the  judicious,  somewhat  haughty  creature 
whom  we  knew. 

"Let's  us  get  up  a  Fourth  of  July  celebration," 
she  said. 

We  held  our  breath.  It  never  would  have  oc- 
curred to  us.  But  now  that  she  suggested  it, 
why  not  ? 

The  New  Boy  leaped  up  on  a  gate-post  and 
sat  looking  down  at  us,  chewing. 

"How  ?"  he  inquired. 

"Get  up  a  partition,"  said  Margaret  Amelia. 
"Circulate  it  like  for  take-a-walk  at  school  or 
teacher's  present,  and  all  sign." 

"And  take  it  to  who  ?"  asked  the  New  Boy. 

Margaret  Amelia  considered. 

"My  father,"  she  proposed. 

The  scope  of  the  idea  was  enormous.  Her 
father  was  a  judge  and  wore  very  black  clothes 
every  day,  and  never  spoke  to  any  of  us.  There- 
fore he  must  be  a  great  man.  Doubtless  he 
could  do  anything. 

Boys,  as  we  knew  them,  usually  flouted  every- 
thing that  we  said,  but  —  possibly  because  of 
Margaret  Amelia's  manner  of  presentation  — 


THE   DECORATION  OF   INDEPENDENCE     333 

this  suggestion  seemed  to  strike  the  New  Boy  fa- 
vourably. Afterward  we  learned  that  this  was 
probably  partly  owing  to  the  fact  that  the  fare 
to  Poynette  was  going  to  eat  distressingly  into 
the  boys'  Fourth  money,  unless  they  walked 
the  ten  miles. 

By  common  consent  we  had  Margaret  Amelia 
and  the  New  Boy  draw  up  the  "partition." 
But  we  all  spent  a  long  time  on  it,  and  at  length 
it  read  :  — 

"We  the  Undersigned  want  there  should  be  a 
July  4  this  year.  We  the  Undersigned  would 
like  a  big  one.  But  if  it  can't  be  so  very  big 
account  of  no  money,  We  the  Undersigned  would 
like  one  anyway,  and  hereby  respectfully  par- 
tition about  this  in  the  name  of  the  Decoration 
of  Independence." 

There  was  some  doubt  whether  or  not  to 
close  this  document  with  "Always  sincerely" 
but  we  decided  to  add  only  the  names,  and  these 
we  set  out  to  secure,  the  New  Boy  carrying  one 
copy  and  Margaret  Amelia  another.  I  remember 
that,  to  honour  the  occasion,  she  put  on  a  pale 
blue  crocheted  shawl  of  her  mother's  and  we  all 
trailed  in  her  wake,  worshipfully. 


334  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

The  lists  grew  amazingly.  Long  before  noon 
we  had  to  get  new  papers.  By  night  we  had 
every  child  that  we  knew,  save  Stitchy  Branchitt. 
He  had  a  railroad  pass  to  Poynette,  and  he 
favoured  the  out-of-town  celebration.  But  the 
personal  considerations  of  economic  conditions 
were  as  usual  sufficient  to  swing  the  event,  and 
the  next  morning  I  suppose  that  twenty-five 
or  thirty  of  us,  bearing  the  names  of  three  or 
four  times  as  many,  marched  into  Judge  Rod- 
man's office. 

On  the  stairs  Margaret  Amelia  had  a  thought. 

"Does  your  father  pay  taxes  ?"  she  inquired 
of  Mary  Elizabeth  —  who  was  with  us,  having 
been  sent  down  town  for  starch. 

"On  his  watch  —  he  used  to,"  said  Mary 
Elizabeth,  doubtfully.  "But  he  hasn't  got  that 
any  more." 

"Well,  I  don't  know,"  said  Margaret  Amelia, 
"whether  we'd  really  ought  to  of  put  down  any 
names  that  their  fathers  don't  pay  taxes.  It 
may  make  a  difference.  I  guess  you're  the 
only  one  we  got  that  their  fathers  don't  —  that 
he  ain't  — " 

I  fancy  that  what  Margaret  Amelia  had  in 
mind  was  that  Mary  Elizabeth's  father  was  the 


THE  DECORATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE    335 

only  one  who  lived  meanly;  for  many  of  the 
others  must  have  gone  untaxed,  but  they  lived 
in  trim,  rented  houses,  and  we  knew  no  differ- 
ence. 

Mary  Elizabeth  was  visibly  disturbed. 

"I  never  thought  of  that,"  she  said.  "Maybe  I 
better  scratch  me  off." 

But  there  seemed  to  me  to  be  something  in- 
definably the  matter  with  this. 

"The  Fourth  of  July  is  for  everybody,  isn't 
it  ?"  I  said.  "Didn't  the  whole  country  think 
of  it?" 

"I  think  it's  like  a  town  though,"  said  Mar- 
garet Amelia.  "The  principal  folks  decided  it, 
I'm  sure.  And  they  always  pay  taxes." 

We  appealed  to  the  New  Boy,  as  authority 
superior  even  to  Margaret  Amelia.  How  was 
this  —  did  the  Decoration  of  Independence  mean 
everybody,  or  not  ?  Could  Mary  Elizabeth  sign 
the  partition  since  her  father  paid  no  taxes  ? 

"Well,"  said  the  New  Boy,  "it  says  every- 
body, don't  it  ?  But  nobody  ever  gets  to  ride 
in  the  parade  but  distinguished  citizens  —  it 
always  says  them,  you  know.  I  s'pose  maybe 
it  meant  the  folks  that  pays  the  taxes,  only  it 
didn't  like  to  put  it  in." 


336  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

"I  better  take  my  name  off,"  said  Mary 
Elizabeth,  decidedly.  "It  might  hurt." 

So  the  New  Boy  produced  a  stump  of  pencil, 
and  we  found  the  right  paper,  and  held  it  up 
against  the  wall  of  the  stairway,  and  Mary 
Elizabeth  scratched  her  name  off. 

"I  won't  come  up,  then,"  she  whispered  to 
me,  and  made  her  way  down  the  stairs,  her  head 
held  very  high. 

Judge  Rodman  was  in  his  office  —  he  makes, 
I  find,  my  eternal  picture  of  "judge,"  short, 
thick,  frock-coated,  bearded,  bald,  spectacled, 
square-toed,  and  with  his  hands  full  of  loose 
papers  and  his  watch-chain  shining. 

"Bless  us,"  he  said,  too,  as  a  judge  should. 

Margaret  Amelia  was  ahead,  —  still  in  the 
pale  blue  crocheted  shawl,  —  and  she  and  the 
New  Boy  laid  down  the  papers,  and  the  judge 
picked  them  up,  and  read.  His  big  pink  face 
flushed  the  more,  and  he  took  off  his  spectacles 
and  brushed  his  eyes,  and  he  cleared  his  throat, 
and  beamed  down  on  us,  and  stood  nodding.  .  .  . 
I  remember  that  he  had  an  editorial  in  his  paper 
the  next  night  called  "A  Lesson  to  the  Com- 
munity," and  another,  later,  "Out  of  the  Mouths 
of  Babes"  —  for  Judge  Rodman  was  a  very 


THE   DECORATION  OF   INDEPENDENCE    337 

great  man,  and  owned  the  newspaper  and  the 
brewery  and  the  principal  department  store,  and 
had  been  to  the  legislature ;  and  his  newspaper 
was  always  thick  with  editorials  about  honour- 
ing the  flag  and  reverencing  authority  and  the 
beauties  of  home  life  —  Miss  Messmore  used  to 
cut  them  out  and  read  them  to  us  at  General 
Exercises. 

So  Judge  Rodman  called  a  Town  meeting  in 
the  Engine  House,  and  we  all  hung  about  the 
door  downstairs,  because  they  said  that  if  chil- 
dren went  to  the  meeting,  they  would  scrape 
their  feet  on  the  bare  floor  so  that  nobody  could 
hear  a  sound ;  and  so  we  waited  outside  until 
we  heard  hands  clapped  and  the  Doxology  sung, 
and  then  we  knew  that  it  had  passed. 

We  were  having  a  new  Court  House  that  year, 
so  the  Court  House  yard  was  not  available  for 
exercises  :  and  the  school  grounds  had  been 
sown  with  grass  seed  in  the  beginning  of  va- 
cation, and  the  market-place  was  nothing  but 
a  small  vacant  lot.  So  there  was  only  one 
place  to  have  the  exercises  :  the  Wood  Yard. 
And  as  there  was  very  little  money  to  do  any- 
thing with,  it  was  voted  to  ask  the  women  to 
take  charge  of  the  celebration  and  arrange 


338  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

something  "tasty,  up-to-date,  and  patriotic," 
as  Judge  Rodman  put  it.  They  set  themselves 
to  do  it.  And  none  of  us  who  were  the  children 
then  will  ever  forget  that  Fourth  of  July  cele- 
bration —  yet  this  is  not  because  of  what  the 
women  planned,  nor  of  anything  that  the  com- 
mittee of  which  Judge  Rodman  was  chairman 
thought  to  do  for  the  sake  of  the  day. 

Our  discussion  of  their  plans  was  not  without 
pessimism. 

"Of  course  what  they  get  up  won't  be  any 
real  good,"  the  New  Boy  advanced.  "They'll 
stick  the  school  organ  up  on  the  platform,  and 
that  sounds  awful  skimpy  outdoors.  And  the 
church  choirs  '11  sing.  And  somebody  '11  stand 
up  and  scold  and  go  on  about  nothing.  But 
it'll  get  folks  here,  and  balloon  men,  and  stuff  to 
sell,  and  a  band ;  so  I  s'pose  we  can  stand  the 
other  doin's." 

"And  there's  fireworks  on  the  canal  bank  in 
the  evening,"  we  reminded  him. 

Fourth  of  July  morning  began  as  usual  before 
it  dawned.  The  New  Boy  and  the  ten  of  his 
tribe  assembled  at  half  past  three  on  the  lawn 
between  our  house  and  that  of  the  New  Family, 
and,  at  a  rough  estimate,  each  fired  off  the  cost 


THE  DECORATION  OF   INDEPENDENCE    339 

of  his  fare  to  Poynette  and  return.  Mary  Eliza- 
beth and  I  awoke  and  listened,  giving  occasional 
ecstatic  pulls  at  our  bell.  Then  we  rose  and 
watched  the  boys  go  ramping  on  toward  other 
fields,  and,  we  breathed  the  dim  beauty  of  the 
hour,  and,  I  think,  wondered  if  it  knew  that  it 
was  Fourth  of  July,  and  we  went  back  to  bed, 
conscious  that  we  were  missing  a  good  sixth  of 
the  day,  a  treasure  which,  as  usual,  the  boys 
were  sharing. 

After  her  work  was  done,  Mary  Elizabeth  and 
I  took  our  bags  of  torpedoes  and  popped  them 
off  on  the  front  bricks.  Delia  was  allowed  to 
have  fire-crackers  if  she  did  not  shoot  them  off 
by  herself,  and  she  was  ardently  absorbed  in 
them  on  their  horse-block,  with  her  father. 
Calista  had  brothers,  and  had  put  her  seventy- 
five  cents  in  with  their  money  on  condition  that 
she  be  allowed  to  stay  with  them  through  the 
day.  Margaret  Amelia  and  Betty  always 
stopped  at  home  until  annual  giant  crackers 
were  fired  from  before  their  piazza,  with  Judge 
Rodman  officiating  in  his  shirt-sleeves,  and  Mrs. 
Rodman  watching  in  a  starched  white  "wrap- 
per" on  the  veranda  and  uttering  little  cries, 
all  under  the  largest  flag  that  there  was  in  the 


340 


WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 


town,  floating  from  the  highest  flagpole.  Mary 
Elizabeth  and  I  had  glimpses  of  them  all  in  a 
general  survey  which  we  made,  resulting  in 
satisfactory  proof  that  the  expected  merry-go- 
round,  the  pop-corn  wagon,  a  chocolate  cart, 
an  ice-cream  cone  man,  and  a  balloon  man  and 
woman  were  already  posted  expectantly  about. 

"If  it  wasn't  for  them,  though,"  observed 
Mary  Elizabeth  to  me,  "the  town  wouldn't  be 
really  acting  like  Fourth  of  July,  do  you  think 
so  ?  It  just  kind  of  lazes  along,  like  a  holiday." 

We  looked  critically  at  the  sunswept  street. 
The  general  aspect  of  the  time  was  that  people 
had  seized  upon  it  to  do  a  little  extra  watering, 
or  some  postponed  weeding,  or  to  tinker  at  the 
screens. 

"How  could  it  act,  though  ?"  I  inquired. 

"Well,"  said  Mary  Elizabeth,  "a  river  flows, 
don't  it  ?  And  I  s'pose  a  mountain  towers. 
And  the  sea  keeps  a-coming  in  ...  and  they 
all  act  like  themselves.  Only  just  a  Town  don't 
take  any  notice  of  itself  —  even  on  the  Fourth." 

That  afternoon  we  were  all  dressed  in  our 
white  dresses  —  "Mine  used  to  have  a  sprig 
in  it,"  said  Mary  Elizabeth,  "but  it's  so  faded 
out  anybody  'd  'most  say  it  was  white,  don't  you 


THE   DECORATION  OF   INDEPENDENCE    341 

think  so  ?"  —  and  we  children  met  at  the  Rod- 
mans' —  where  Margaret  Amelia  and  Betty 
appeared  in  white  embroidered  dresses  and  blue 
ribbons  and  blue  stockings,  and  we  marched 
down  the  hill,  behind  the  band,  to  the  Wood 
Yard.  The  Wood  Yard  had  great  flags  and 
poles  set  at  intervals,  with  bunting  festooned 
between,  and  the  platform  was  covered  with 
bunting,  and  the  great  open  space  of  the  yard 
was  laid  with  board  benches.  Place  in  front 
was  reserved  for  us,  and  already  the  rest  of  the 
town  packed  the  Yard  and  hung  about  the 
fences.  Stitchy  Branchitt  had  given  up  his 
journey  to  Poynette  after  all,  and  had  estab- 
lished a  lemonade  stand  at  the  Wood  Yard 
gate  —  "a  fool  thing  to  do,"  the  New  Boy  ob- 
served plainly.  "He  knows  we've  spent  all  we 
had,  and  the  big  folks  never  think  your  stuff's 
clean."  But  Stitchy  was  enormously  enjoying 
himself  by  deafeningly  shouting  :  — 

"Here's  what  you  get  —  here's  what  you  get 
—  here's  what  you  get.  Cheap  —  cheap  — 
cheap!" 

"Quit  cheepin'  like  some  kind  o'  bir-r-rd," 
said  the  New  Boy,  out  of  one  corner  of  his 
mouth,  as  he  passed  him. 


342  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

Just  inside  the  Wood  Yard  gate  I  saw,  with 
something  of  a  shock,  Mary  Elizabeth's  father 
standing.  He  was  leaning  against  the  fence, 
with  his  arms  folded,  and  as  he  caught  the  look 
of  Mary  Elizabeth,  who  was  walking  with  me, 
he  smiled,  and  I  was  further  surprised  to  see 
how  kind  his  eyes  were.  They  were  almost  like 
my  own  father's  eyes.  This  seemed  to  me  some- 
how a  very  curious  thing,  and  I  turned  and 
looked  at  Mary  Elizabeth,  and  thought :  "Why, 
it's  her  father  —  just  the  same  as  mine."  It 
surprised  me,  too,  to  see  him  there.  When  I 
came  to  think  of  it,  I  had  never  before  seen 
him  where  folk  were.  Always,  unless  Mary 
Elizabeth  were  with  him,  he  had  been  walking 
alone,  or  sitting  down  where  other  people  never 
sat. 

Judge  Rodman  was  on  the  platform,  and  as 
soon  as  the  band  and  the  choirs  would  let  him 
—  he  made  several  false  starts  at  rhetorical 
pauses  in  the  music  —  he  introduced  a  clergy- 
man who  had  always  lived  in  the  town  and  who 
prayed  for  the  continuance  of  peace  and  the 
safe  conquest  of  all  our  enemies.  Then  Judge 
Rodman  himself  made  the  address,  having  gen- 
erously consented  to  do  so  when  it  was  proposed 


THE   DECORATION   OF  INDEPENDENCE    343 

to  keep  the  money  in  the  town  by  hiring  a  local 
speaker.  He  began  with  the  Norsemen  and 
descended  through  Queen  Isabella  and  Colum- 
bus and  the  Colonies,  making  a  detour  of  Sir 
Walter  Raleigh  and  his  cloak,  Benedict  Arnold, 
Israel  Putnam  and  Pocahontas,  and  so  by  way 
of  Valley  Forge  and  the  Delaware  to  Faneuil 
Hall  and  the  spirit  of  1776.  It  was  a  grand 
flight,  filled  with  what  were  afterward  freely 
referred  to  as  magnificent  passages  about  the. 
storm,  the  glory  of  war,  and  the  love  of  our 
fellow-men. 

("  Supposing  you  happen  to  love  the  enemy," 
said  Mary  Elizabeth,  afterward. 

"Well,  a  pretty  thing  that  would  be  to  do," 
said  the  New  Boy,  shocked. 

"We  had  it  in  the  Sunday  school  lesson," 
Mary  Elizabeth  maintained. 

"Oh,  well,"  said  the  New  Boy.  "I  don't 
mean  about  such  things.  I  mean  about  what 
you  do." 

But  I  remember  that  Mary  Elizabeth  still 
looked  puzzled.) 

Especially  was  Judge  Rodman's  final  sentence 
generally  repeated  for  days  afterward  :  — 

"At  Faneuil  Hall,"    said    the    judge,    "the 


344  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

hour  at  last  had  struck.  The  hands  on  the  face 
of  the  clock  stood  still.  'The  force  of  Nature 
could  no  further  go.'  The  supreme  thing  had 
been  accomplished.  Henceforth  we  were  em- 
balmed in  the  everlasting  and  unchangeable 
essence  of  freedom  —  freedom  — freedom." 

Indeed,  he  held  our  attention  from  the  first, 
both  because  he  did  not  read  what  he  said,  and 
because  the  ice  in  the  pitcher  at  his  elbow  had 
melted  before  he  began  and  did  not  require 
watching. 

Then  came  the  moment  when,  having  com- 
pleted his  address,  he  took  up  the  Decoration  of 
Independence,  to  read  it;  and  began  the  hunt 
for  his  spectacles.  We  watched  him  go  through 
his  pockets,  but  we  did  so  with  an  interest  which 
somewhat  abated  when  he  began  the  second 
round. 

"What  is  the  Decoration  of  Independence, 
anyhow  ?"  I  whispered  to  Mary  Elizabeth,  our 
acquaintance  with  it  having  been  limited  to 
learning  it  "by  heart"  in  school. 

"Why,  don't  you  know?"  Mary  Elizabeth 
returned.  "It's  that  thing  Miss  Messmore  can 
say  so  fast.  It's  when  we  was  the  British." 

"Who  decorated  it  ?"  I  wanted  to  know. 


THE  DECORATION  OF   INDEPENDENCE         345 

"George  Washington,"  replied  Mary  Eliza- 
beth. 

"How?"   I  pressed  it.     "How'd  he  do  it?" 

"I  don't  know  —  but  I  think  that's  what  he 
wanted  of  the  cherry  blossoms,"  said  she. 

At  this  point  Judge  Rodman  gave  up  the 
search. 

"I  deeply  regret,"  said  he,  "that  I  shall  be 
obliged  to  forego  my  reading  of  our  national 
document  which,  next  to  the  Constitution  itself, 
best  embodies  our  unchanging  principles." 

And  then  he  added  something  which  smote 
the  front  rows  suddenly  breathless :  — 

"However,  it  occurs  to  me,  since  this  is  pre- 
eminently the  children's  celebration  and  since 
I  am  given  to  understand  that  our  public  schools 
now  bestow  due  and  proper  attention  upon  the 
teaching  of  civil  government,  that  it  will  be  a 
fitting  thing,  a  moving  thing  even,  to  hear  these 
words  of  our  great  foundation  spoken  in  child- 
ish tones.  Miss  Messmore,  can  you,  as  teacher 
of  the  city  schools,  in  the  grades  where  the 
idea  of  our  celebration  so  fittingly  originated, 
among  the  tender  young,  can  you  recommend, 
madam,  perhaps,  one  of  your  bright  pupils  to 
repeat  for  us  these  undying  utterances  whose 


346  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

commitment  has  now  become,  as  I  understand 
it,  a  part  of  our  public  school  curriculum  ?" 

There  was  an  instant's  pause,  and  then  I 
heard  Margaret  Amelia  Rodman's  name 
spoken.  Miss  Messmore  had  uttered  it.  Judge 
Rodman  was  repeating  it,  smiling  blandly  down 
with  a  pleased  diffidence. 

"There  can  be  no  one  more  fitted  to  do  this, 
Judge  Rodman,"  Miss  Messmore  had  promptly 
said,  "than  your  daughter,  Margaret  Amelia, 
at  whose  suggestion  this  celebration,  indeed, 
has  come  about." 

Poor  Margaret  Amelia.  In  spite  of  her  em- 
broidered gown,  her  blue  ribbons,  and  her  blue 
stockings,  I  have  seldom  seen  anyone  look  so 
wretched  as  did  she  when  they  made  her  mount 
that  platform.  To  give  her  courage  her  father 
met  her,  and  took  her  hand.  And  then,  in  his 
pride  and  confidence,  something  else  occurred 
to  him. 

"Tell  us,  Margaret  Amelia,"  he  said  with  a 
gesture  infinitely  paternal,  "how  came  the 
children  to  think  of  demanding  of  us  wise-heads 
that  we  give  observance  to  this  day  which  we 
had  already  voted  to  let  slip  past  unattended  ? 
What  spirit  moved  the  children  to  this  act  ? " 


THE  DECORATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE    347 

At  first  Margaret  Amelia  merely  twisted,  and 
fingered  her  sash  at  the  side.  Margaret  Amelia 
was  always  called  on  for  visitors'  days,  .and  the 
like.  She  could  usually  command  her  faculties 
and  give  a  straightforward  answer,  not  so  much 
because  of  what  she  knew  as  because  of  her  un- 
failing self-confidence.  Of  this  her  father  was 
serenely  aware ;  but,  aware  also  that  the  situa- 
tion made  unusual  demands,  he  concluded  to 
help  her  somewhat. 

"How  came  the  children,"  he  encouragingly 
put  it,  "  to  think  of  making  this  fine  effort  to 
save  our  National  holiday  this  year  ?  " 

Margaret  Amelia  straightened  slightly.  She 
faced  her  audience  with  something  of  her  native 
confidence,  and  told  them  :  — 

"Why,"  she  said,  "we  all  had  some  Fourth 
of  July  money,  and  there  wasn't  going  to  be  any 
way  to  spend  it." 

A  ripple  of  laughter  ran  round,  and  Judge 
Rodman's  placid  pink  turned  to  purple. 

"I  fear,"  he  observed  gravely,  "that  the  im- 
mediate nature  of  the  event  has  somewhat  ob- 
scured the  real  significance  of  the  children's 
most  superior  movement.  Now,  my  child ! 
Miss  Messmore  thinks  that  you  should  recite 


348  WHEN   I  WAS  A   LITTLE  GIRL 

for  us  at  least  a  portion  of  the  Declaration  of 
Independence.  Will  you  do  so  ?" 

Margaret  Amelia  looked  at  him,  down  at  us, 
away  toward  the  waiting  Wood  Yard,  and  then 
at  Miss  Messmore. 

"Is  it  that  about  'The  shades  of  night  were 
falling  fast'  ?"  she  demanded. 

In  the  roar  of  laughter  that  followed,  Mar- 
garet Amelia  ran  down,  poor  child,  and  sobbed 
on  Miss  Messmore's  shoulder.  I  never  think  of 
that  moment  without  something  of  a  return  of 
my  swelling  sympathy  for  her  who  suffered  this 
species  of  martyrdom,  and  so  needlessly.  I 
have  seen,  out  of  schools  and  out  of  certain  of 
our  superstitions,  many  martyrdoms  result, 
but  never  one  that  has  touched  me  more. 

I  do  not  know  whether  something  of  this 
feeling  was  in  the  voice  that  we  next  heard  speak- 
ing, or  whether  that  which  animated  it  was  only 
its  own  bitterness.  That  voice  sounded,  clear 
and  low-pitched,  through  the  time's  confusion. 

"I  will  read  the  Declaration  of  Independence," 
it  said. 

And  making  his  way  through  the  crowd,  and 
mounting  the  platform  steps,  we  saw  Mary 
Elizabeth's  father. 


THE  DECORATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE    349 

Instinctively  I  put  out  my  hand  to  her.  But 
he  was  wholly  himself,  and  this  I  think  that  she 
knew  from  the  first.  He  was  neatly  dressed,  and 
he  laid  his  shabby  hat  on  the  table  and  picked 
up  the  book  with  a  tranquil  air  of  command. 
I  remember  how  frail  he  looked  as  he  buttoned 
his  worn  coat,  and  began  to  read. 

"'We,  the  people  of  the  United  States  — '" 

It  was  the  first  time  that  I  had  ever  thought 
of  Mary  Elizabeth's  father  as  to  be  classed  with 
anybody.  He  had  never  had  employment,  he 
belonged  to  no  business,  to  no  church,  to  no 
class  of  any  sort.  He  merely  lived  over  across 
the  tracks,  and  he  went  and  came  alone.  And 
here  he  was  saying  "We,  the  people  of  the 
United  States,"  just  as  if  he  belonged. 

When  my  vague  fear  had  subsided  lest  they 
might  stop  his  reading  because  he  was  not  a 
taxpayer,  I  listened  for  the  first  time  in  my 
life  to  what  he  read.  To  be  sure,  I  had  —  more 
or  less  —  learned  it.  Now  I  listened. 

"Free  and  equal,"  I  heard  him  say,  and  I 
wondered  what  this  meant.  "Free  and  equal." 
But  there  were  Mary  Elizabeth  and  I,  were  we 
equal  ?  Perhaps,  though,  it  didn't  mean  little 
girls  —  only  grown-ups.  But  there  were  Mary 


350  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

Elizabeth's  father  and  mother,  and  all  the  other 
fathers  and  mothers,  they  were  grown  up,  and 
were  they  equal  ?  And  what  were  they  free 
from,  I  wondered.  Perhaps,  though,  I  didn't 
know  what  these  words  meant.  "Free  and 
equal"  sounded  like  fairies,  but  folks  I  was 
accustomed  to  think  of  as  burdened,  and  as 
different  from  one  another,  as  Judge  Rodman  was 
different  from  Mary  Elizabeth's  father.  This, 
however,  was  the  first  time  that  ever  I  had 
caught  the  word  right :  Not  Decoration,  but 
Declaration  of  Independence,  it  seemed  ! 

Mary  Elizabeth's  father  finished,  and  closed 
the  book,  and  stood  for  a  moment  looking  over 
the  Wood  Yard.  He  was  very  tall  and  pale,  and 
seeing  him  with  something  of  dignity  in  his 
carriage  I  realized  with  astonishment  that,  if  he 
were  "dressed  up,"  he  would  look  just  like  the 
men  in  the  choir,  just  like  the  minister  himself. 
Then  suddenly  he  smiled  round  at  us  all,  and 
even  broke  into  a  moment  of  soft  and  pleasant 
laughter. 

"It  has  been  a  long  time,"  he  said,  "since  I 
have  had  occasion  to  remember  the  Declaration 
of  Independence.  I  am  glad  to  have  had  it 
called  to  my  attention.  We  are  in  danger  of 


THE  DECORATION  OF   INDEPENDENCE    351 

forgetting  about  it  —  some  of  us.  May  I  ven- 
ture to  suggest  that,  when  it  is  taught  in  the 
schools,  it  be  made  quite  clear  to  whom  this 
document  refers.  And  for  the  rest,  my  friends, 
God  bless  us  all  —  some  day." 

"Bless  us,"  was  what  Judge  Rodman  had 
said.  I  remember  wondering  if  they  meant  the 
same  thing. 

He  turned  and  went  down  the  steps,  and  at 
the  foot  he  staggered  a  little,  and  I  saw  with 
something  of  pride  that  it  was  my  father  who 
went  to  him  and  led  him  away. 

At  once  the  band  struck  gayly  into  a  patriotic 
air,  and  the  people  on  all  the  benches  got  to  their 
feet,  and  the  men  took  off  their  hats.  And  above 
the  music  I  heard  Stitchy  Branchitt  beginning 
to  shout  again  :  — 

"Here's  what  you  get  —  here's  what  you  get 
—  here's  what  you  get !  Something  cheap  — 
cheap  —  cheap!" 

When  I  came  home  from  the  fireworks  with 
Delia's  family  and  Mary  Elizabeth,  my  father 
and  mother  were  sitting  on  the  veranda. 

"It's  we  who  are  to  blame,"  I  heard  my  father 
saying,  "though  we're  fine  at  glossing  it  over." 


352  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

I  wondered  what  had  happened,  and  I  sat 
down  on  the  top  step  and  began  to  untie  my  last 
torpedo  from  the  corner  of  my  handkerchief. 
Mary  Elizabeth  had  one  left,  too,  and  we  had 
agreed  to  throw  them  on  the  stone  window-sills 
of  our  rooms  as  a  final  salute. 

"Let's  ask  her  now,"  said  father. 

Mother  leaned  toward  me. 

"Dear,"  she  said,  "father  has  been  having 
a  talk  with  Mary  Elizabeth's  father  and  mother. 
And  —  when  her  father  isn't  here  any  more  — 
which  may  not  be  long  now,  we  think  .  .  . 
would  you  like  us  to  have  Mary  Elizabeth  come 
and  live  here  ?" 

" With  us  ? "   I  cried.     " With  us?" 

Yes,  they  meant  with  us. 

"To  work  ?"  I  demanded. 

"To  be,"  mother  said. 

"Oh,  yes,  yes!"  I  welcomed  it.  "But  her 
father  —  where  will  he  be  ?" 

"In  a  little  while  now,"  father  said,  "he  will 
be  free  —  and  perhaps  even  equal." 

I  did  not  understand  this  wholly.  Besides, 
there  was  far  too  much  to  think  about.  I 
turned  toward  the  house  of  the  New  Family.  A 
light  glowed  in  Mary  Elizabeth's  room.  I 


THE  DECORATION  OF   INDEPENDENCE     353 

brought  down  my  torpedo  on  the  brick  walk, 
and  it  exploded  merrily,  and  from  Mary  Eliza- 
beth's window  came  an  answering  pop. 

"Then  Mary  Elizabeth  will  get  free  and  equal 
too  !"   I  cried  joyously. 


2A 


XIX 

EARTH-MOTHER 

AND  for  that  day  and  that  night,  and  for  all 
the  days  and  all  the  nights,  I  should  like  to  tell 
a  story  about  the  Earth,  and  about  some  of  the 
things  that  it  keeps  expecting. 

And  if  it  were  Sometime  Far  Away  —  say 
1950  —  or  2050  —  or  3050  —  I  should  like  to 
meet  some  Children  of  Then,  and  tell  them  this 
story  about  Now,  and  hear  them  all  talk  of  what 
a  curious  place  the  earth  must  have  been  long 
ago,  and  of  how  many  things  it  did  not  yet  do. 

And  their  Long  Ago  is  our  Now  ! 

For  ages  and  ages  (I  should  say  to  the  Chil- 
dren of  Then)  the  Earth  was  a  great  round  place 
of  land  and  water,  with  trees,  fields,  cities,  moun- 
tains, and  the  like  dotted  about  on  it  in  a  pat- 
tern ;  and  it  spun  and  spun,  out  in  space,  like 
an  enormous  engraved  ball  tossed  up  in  the  air 
from  somewhere.  And  many  people  thought 
that  this  was  all  there  was  to  know  about  it, 

354 


EARTH-MOTHER  355 

and  after  school  they  shut  up  their  geographies 
and  went  about  engraving  new  trees,  fields, 
cities,  and  such  things  on  the  outside  of  the  earth. 
And  they  truly  thought  that  this  was  All,  and 
they  kept  on  doing  it,  rather  tired  but  very  in- 
dependent. 

Now  the  Earth  had  a  friend  and  companion 
whom  nobody  thought  much  about.  It  was 
Earth's  Shadow,  cast  by  the  sun  in  the  way 
that  any  other  shadow  is  cast,  but  it  was  such 
a  big  shadow  that  of  course  it  fell  far,  far  out 
in  space.  And  as  Earth  went  round,  naturally 
its  Shadow  went  round,  and  if  one  could  have 
looked  down,  one  would  have  seen  the  Shadow 
sticking  out  and  out,  so  that  the  Earth  and  its 
Shadow-handle  would  have  seemed  almost  like 
a  huge  saucepan  filled  with  cities  and  people, 
all  being  held  out  over  the  sun,  to  get  them  done. 

Among  the  cities  was  one  very  beautiful 
City.  She  wore  robes  of  green  or  of  white, 
delicately  embroidered  with  streets  in  a  free 
and  exquisite  pattern,  and  her  hair  was  like  a 
flowing  river,  and  at  night  she  put  on  many 
glorious  jewels.  And  she  had  the  power  to 
change  herself  at  will  into  a  woman.  This  was 
a  power,  however,  which  she  had  never  yet  used, 


356  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

and  indeed  she  did  not  yet  know  wholly  that  she 
had  this  power,  but  she  used  to  dream  about  it, 
and  sometimes  she  used  to  sing  about  the  dream, 
softly,  to  herself.  Men  thought  that  this  song 
was  the  roar  of  the  City's  traffic,  but  it  was  not 
so. 

Now  the  Earth  was  most  anxious  for  this  City 
to  become  a  woman  because,  although  the  Earth 
whirled  like  an  enormous  engraved  ball  and 
seemed  like  a  saucepan  held  over  the  sun,  still 
all  the  time  it  was  really  just  the  Earth,  and  it 
was  very  human  and  tired  and  discouraged,  and 
it  needed  a  woman  to  rest  it  and  to  sing  to  it 
and  to  work  with  it,  in  her  way.  But  there  were 
none,  because  all  the  ordinary  women  were  busy 
with  their  children.  So  the  only  way  seemed 
to  be  for  the  City  to  be  a  woman,  as  she  knew 
how  to  be;  and  the  Earth  was  most  anxious 
to  have  this  happen.  And  it  tried  to  see  how  it 
could  bring  this  about. 

I  think  that  the  Earth  may  have  asked  the 
Moon,  because  she  is  a  woman  and  might  be 
expected  to  know  something  about  it.  But  the 
Moon,  as  usual,  was  asleep  on  the  sky,  with  a 
fine  mosquito-netting  of  mist  all  about  her,  and 
she  said  not  a  word.  (If  you  look  at  the  Moon, 


EARTH-MOTHER  357 

you  can  see  how  like  a  beautiful,  sleeping  face 
she  seems.)  I  think  that  the  Earth  may  have 
asked  Mars,  too,  because  he  is  so  very  near  that 
it  would  be  only  polite  to  consult  him.  But  he 
said  :  "I'm  only  a  few  million  years  old  yet. 
Don't  expect  me  to  understand  either  cities  or 
people."  And  finally  the  Earth  asked  its  Shadow. 

"Shadow,  dear,"  it  said,  "you  are  pretty 
deep.  Can't  you  tell  me  how  to  make  this  City 
turn  into  a  woman  ?  For  I  want  her  to  work 
with  me,  in  her  way." 

The  Shadow,  who  did  nothing  but  run  to 
keep  up  with  the  Earth,  let  a  few  thousand  miles 
sweep  by,  and  then  it  said :  — 

"Really,  I  wouldn't  know.  I'm  not  up  on 
much  but  travel." 

"Well,"  said  the  Earth,  "then  please  just  ask 
the  Uttermost  Spaces.  You  continually  pass 
by  that  way  and  somebody  ought  to  know 
something." 

So  the  Shadow  swept  along  the  Uttermost 
Spaces  and  made  an  abyss-to-abyss  canvass. 

"The  Uttermost  Spaces  want  to  know,"  the 
Shadow  reported  next  day,  "whether  in  all 
that  City  there  is  a  child.  They  said  if  there  is, 
it  could  probably  do  what  you  want." 


358  WHEN  I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

"A  child,"  said  the  Earth.  "Well,  sea  caves 
and  firmaments.  Of  course  there  is.  What  do 
the  Uttermost  Spaces  think  I'm  in  the  Earth 
business  for  if  it  isn't  for  the  Children  ?" 

"I  don't  know,"  said  its  Shadow,  rather 
sulkily.  "I'm  only  telling  you  what  I  heard. 
If  you're  cross  with  me,  I  won't  keep  up  with  you. 
I'm  about  tired  of  it  anyway." 

"Oh,  I  beg  your  pardon,"  said  the  Earth, 
"You  mustn't  mind  me.  I'm  always  a  little 
sunstruck.  A  thousand  thanks.  Come  along, 
do." 

"A  child,"  thought  the  Earth,  "a  child.  How 
could  a  child  change  a  City  into  a  woman  ? 
And  what  child?" 

But  it  was  a  very  wise  old  Earth,  and  to  its 
mind  all  children  are  valuable.  So  after  a  time 
it  concluded  that  one  child  in  that  City  would 
be  as  good  as  another,  and  perhaps  any  child 
could  work  the  miracle.  So  it  said:  "I  choose 
to  work  the  miracle  that  child  who  is  thinking 
about  the  most  beautiful  thing  in  the  world." 

Then  it  listened. 

Now,  since  the  feet  of  people  are  pressed  all 
day  long  to  earth,  it  is  true  that  the  Earth 
can  talk  with  everyone  and,  by  listening,  can 


EARTH-MOTHER  359 

know  what  is  in  each  heart.  When  it  listened 
this  time,  it  chanced  that  it  was  the  middle 
of  the  night,  when  nearly  every  little  child 
was  sleeping  and  dreaming.  But  there  was 
one  little  girl  lying  wide  awake  and  staring  out 
her  bedroom  window  up  at  the  stars,  and  as 
soon  as  the  Earth  listened  to  her  thoughts,  it 
knew  that  she  was  the  one. 

Of  what  do  you  suppose  she  was  thinking  ? 
She  was  thinking  of  her  mother,  who  had  died 
before  she  could  remember  her,  and  wondering 
where  she  was ;  and  she  was  picturing  what 
her  mother  had  looked  like,  and  what  her 
mother  would  have  said  to  her,  and  how  her 
mother's  arms  would  have  felt  about  her,  and 
her  mother's  good-night  kiss ;  and  she  was 
wondering  how  it  would  be  to  wake  in  the  night, 
a  little  frightened,  and  turn  and  stretch  out 
her  arms  and  find  her  mother  breathing  there 
beside  her,  ready  to  wake  her  and  give  her  an 
in-the-middle-of-the-night  kiss  and  send  her 
back  to  sleep  again.  And  she  thought  about 
it  all  so  longingly  that  her  little  heart  was  like 
nothing  in  the  world  so  much  as  the  one  word 
"Mother." 

"It  will  be  you,"  said  the  Earth. 


360  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

So  the  Earth  spoke  to  its  Shadow  who  was, 
of  course,  just  then  fastened  to  that  same  side, 
it  being  night. 

"Shadow,  dear,"  Earth  said,  like  a  prescrip- 
tion, "fold  closely  about  her  and  drop  out  a 
dream  or  two.  But  do  not  let  her  forget." 

So  Shadow  folded  about  her  and  dropped 
out  a  dream  or  two.  And  all  night  Earth  lapped 
her  in  its  silences,  but  they  did  not  let  her  forget. 
And  Shadow  left  word  with  Morning,  telling 
Morning  what  to  do,  and  she  kissed  the  little 
girl's  eyelids  so  that  the  first  thing  she  thought 
when  she  waked  was  how  wonderful  it  would 
be  to  be  kissed  awake  by  her  mother.  And  her 
little  heart  beat  Mother  in  her  breast. 

As  soon  as  she  was  dressed  ("Muvvers 
wouldn't  pinch  your  feet  with  the  button-hook, 
or  tie  your  ribbon  too  tight,  or  get  your  laxtixs 
short  so's  they  pull,"  she  thought),  as  soon  as 
she  was  dressed,  and  had  pressed  her  feet  to 
Earth,  Earth  began  to  talk  to  her. 

"Go  out  and  find  a  mother,"  it  said  to  her. 

"My  muvver  is  dead,"  thought  the  little 
girl. 

Earth  said  :  "I  am  covered  with  mothers  and 
with  those  who  ought  to  be  mothers.  Go  to 


EARTH-MOTHER  361 

them.  Tell  them  you  haven't  any  mother. 
Wouldn't  one  of  those  be  next  best  ?" 

And  the  Earth  said  so  much,  and  the  little 
girl's  heart  so  strongly  beat  Mother,  that  she 
could  not  help  going  to  see. 

On  the  street  she  looked  very  little  and  she 
felt  —  oh,  much  littler  than  in  the  house  with 
furniture.  For  the  street  seemed  to  be  merely 
a  world  of  Skirts  —  skirts  everywhere  and  also 
the  bottoms  of  men's  coats  with  impersonal 
Legs  below.  And  these  said  nothing.  Away 
up  above  were  Voices,  talking  very  fast,  and  to 
one  another,  and  entirely  leaving  her  out.  She 
was  out  of  the  conversations  and  out  of  account, 
and  it  felt  far  more  lonely  than  it  did  with  just 
furniture.  Now  and  then  another  child  would 
pass  who  would  look  at  her  as  if  she  really  were 
there ;  but  everyone  was  hanging  on  its  mother's 
hand  or  her  Skirt,  or  else,  if  the  child  were 
alone,  a  Voice  from  ahead  or  behind  was  saying  : 
"  Hurry,  dear.  Mother  won't  wait.  Come  and 
see  what's  in  this  window."  Littlegirl  thought 
how  wonderful  that  would  be,  to  have  somebody 
ahead  looking  back  for  her,  and  she  waited  on 
purpose,  by  a  hydrant,  and  pretended  that  she 
was  going  to  hear  somebody  saying  :  "Do  come 


362  WHEN   I  WAS  A   LITTLE  GIRL 

on,  dear.  Mother '11  be  late  for  her  fitting." 
But  nobody  said  anything.  Only  an  automo- 
bile stood  close  by  the  hydrant  and  in  it  was  a 
little  yellow-haired  girl,  and  just  at  that  moment 
a  lady  came  from  a  shop  and  got  in  the  automo- 
bile and  handed  the  little  girl  a  white  tissue- 
paper  parcel  and  said  :  "  Sit  farther  over  — 
there's  a  dear.  Now,  that's  for  you,  but  don't 
open  it  till  we  get  home."  What  was  in  the 
parcel,  Littlegirl  wondered,  and  stood  looking 
after  the  automobile  until  it  was  lost.  One  little 
boy  passed  her,  holding  tightly  to  his  mother's 
hand,  and  she  stooping  over  him  and  he  crying. 
Littlegirl  tried  to  think  what  could  be  bad 
enough  to  cry  about  when  you  had  hold  of  your 
mother's  hand  and  she  was  bending  over  you. 
A  stone  in  your  shoe  ?  Or  a  pin  in  your  neck  ? 
Or  because  you'd  lost  your  locket  ?  But  would 
any  of  those  things  matter  enough  to  cry  when 
your  mother  had  hold  of  your  hand  ?  She 
looked  up  at  the  place  beside  her  where  her  own 
mother  would  be  walking  an,d  tried  to  see  where 
her  face  would  be. 

And  as  she  looked  up,  she  saw  the  tops  of  the 
high  buildings  across  the  street,  and  below  them 
the  windows  hung  thick  as  pictures  on  a  wall, 


EARTH-MOTHER  363 

and  thicker.  The  shop  doors  were  open  like 
doors  to  wonderful,  mysterious  palaces  where 
you  went  in  with  your  mother  and  she  picked 
out  your  dresses  and  said  :  "Wouldn't  you  like 
this  one,  dear  ?  Mother  used  to  have  one  like 
this  when  she  was  a  little  girl."  And  Littlegirl 
saw,  too,  one  of  the  side  streets,  and  how  it  was 
all  lined  with  homes,  whose  doors  were  shut, 
like  closed  lips  with  nothing  to  say  to  anybody 
save  those  who  lived  there  —  the  children  who 
were  promised  Christmas  trees  —  and  got  them, 
too.  And  between  shops  and  homes  was  the 
world  of  Skirts  and  Voices,  mothers  whose 
little  girls  were  at  home,  daddys  who  would  run 
up  the  front  steps  at  night  and  cry  :  "Come  here, 
Puss.  Did  you  grow  any  since  morning  ?" 
Or,  "Where's  my  son?"  (Littlegirl  knew  how  it 
went  —  she  had  heard  them.)  Shops  and  homes 
and  crowds  —  a  City  !  A  City  for  everybody 
but  her. 

When  the  Earth  —  who  all  this  time  was 
listening  —  heard  her  think  that,  it  made  to  flow 
up  into  her  little  heart  the  longing  to  belong  to 
somebody.  And  Littlegirl  ran  straight  up  to  a 
lady  in  blue  linen,  who  was  passing. 

"Are  you  somebody's  muwer  ?"  she  asked. 


364  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

The  lady  looked  down  in  the  little  face  and 
stood  still. 

"No,"  she  said  soberly. 

Littlegirl  slipped  her  hand  in  her  white  glove. 

"I  aren't  anybody's  little  girl,"  she  said. 
"Let's  trade  each  other." 

And  the  Earth,  who  was  listening,  made  to 
flow  in  the  lady's  heart  an  old  longing. 

"Let's  go  in  here,  at  any  rate,"  said  the  Lady, 
"and  talk  it  over." 

So  they  went  in  a  wonderful  place,  all  made 
of  mirrors,  and  jars  of  bonbons,  and  long  trays, 
as  big  as  doll  cradles,  and  filled  with  bonbons 
too.  And  they  sat  at  a  cool  table,  under  a  whirry 
fan,  and  had  before  them  thick,  foamy,  frozen 
chocolate.  And  the  Blue  Linen  Lady  said  :  — 

"But  whose  little  girl  are  you,  really  ?" 

"I'm  my  little  girl,  I  think,"  said  Littlegirl. 
"I  don't  know  who  else's." 

"With  whom  do  you  live  ?"   asked  the  Lady. 

"Some  peoples,"  said  Littlegirl,  "that's  other 
people's  muvvers.  Don't  let's  say  about  them." 

"What  shall  we  say  about  ?"  asked  the  Lady, 
smiling. 

"Let's  pretend  you  was  my  muvver,"  said 
Littlegirl. 


EARTH-MOTHER  365 

The  lady  looked  startled,  but  she  nodded 
slowly. 

"Very  well,"  she  said.  "I'll  play  that.  How 
do  you  play  it  ?" 

Littlegirl  hesitated  and  looked  down  in  her 
chocolate. 

"I  don't  know  berry  well,"  she  said  soberly, 
"r™  say  how." 

"Well,"  said  the  Lady,  "if  you  were  my  little 
girl,  I  should  probably  be  saying  to  you,  'Do  you 
like  this,  dear  ?  Don't  eat  it  fast.  And  take 
little  bits  of  bites.'  And  you  would  say,  'Yes, 
mother.'  And  then  what  ?" 

Littlegirl  looked  deep  down  her  chocolate. 
She  was  making  a  cave  in  one  side  of  it,  with  the 
foamy  part  on  top  for  snow.  And  while  she 
looked  the  snow  suddenly  seemed  to  melt  and 
brim  over,  and  she  looked  at  the  lady  mutely. 

"I  don't  know  how,"  she  said  ;  "I  don't  know 
how!" 

"Never  mind  !"  said  the  Lady,  very  quickly 
and  a  little  unsteadily,  "I'll  tell  you  a  story 
instead  —  shall  I  ?" 

So  the  Blue  Linen  Lady  told  her  a  really  won- 
derful story.  It  was  about  a  dwarf  who  was 
made  of  gold,  all  but  his  heart,  and  about  what 


366  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

a  terrible  time  he  had  trying  to  pretend  that 
he  was  a  truly,  flesh  and  blood  person.  It  made 
him  so  unhappy  to  have  to  pretend  all  the  time 
that  he  got  scandalous  cross  to  everybody,  and 
nothing  could  please  him.  His  gold  kept  getting 
harder  and  harder  till  he  could  move  only  with 
the  greatest  difficulty,  and  it  looked  as  if  his 
heart  were  going  golden  too.  And  if  it  did,  of 
course  he  would  die.  But  one  night,  just  as 
the  soft  outside  edges  of  his  heart  began  to  take 
on  a  shining  tinge,  a  little  boy  ran  out  in  the  road 
where  the  dwarf  was  passing,  and  in  the  dark 
mistook  him  for  his  father,  and  jumped  up  and 
threw  his  arms  about  the  dwarf's  neck  and 
hugged  him.  And  of  a  sudden  the  dwarfs 
heart  began  to  beat,  and  when  he  got  in  the  house, 
he  saw  that  he  wasn't  gold  any  more,  and  he 
wasn't  a  dwarf  -  -  but  he  was  straight  and  strong 
and  real.  "And  so,"  the  Lady  ended  it,  "you 
must  love  every  grown-up  you  can,  because 
maybe  their  hearts  are  turning  into  gold  and  you 
can  stop  it  that  way." 

"An'  must  you  love  every  children  ?"  asked 
Littlegirl,  very  low. 

"Yes,"  said  the  Lady,  "I  must." 

"An'  will  you  love  me  an'  be  my  muvver  ?" 
asked  Littlegirl. 


EARTH-MOTHER  367 

The  Blue  Linen  Lady  sighed. 

"You  dear  little  thing,"  she  said,  "I'd  love 
it  —  I'd  love  it.  But  I  truly  haven't  any  place 
for  you  to  live  —  or  any  time  to  give  you. 
Come  now  —  I'm  going  to  get  you  some  candy 
and  take  you  back  where  you  belong  —  in  an 
automobile.  Won't  that  be  fun  ?" 

But  when  she  turned  for  the  candy,  Littlegirl 
slipped  out  the  door  and  ran  and  ran  as  fast  as 
she  could.  (She  had  thanked  the  lady,  first  thing, 
for  the  thick,  frozen,  foamy  chocolate,  so  that 
part  was  all  right.)  And  Littlegirl  went  round 
a  corner  and  lost  herself  in  a  crowd  —  in  which 
it  is  far  easier  to  lose  yourself  than  in  the  woods. 
And  there  she  was  again,  worse  off  than  before, 
because  she  had  felt  how  it  would  feel  to  feel 
that  she  had  a  mother. 

The  Earth  —  who  would  have  shaken  its 
head  if  it  could  without  disarranging  everything 
on  it  —  said  things  instead  to  its  Shadow  —  who 
was  by  now  on  the  other  side  of  the  world  from 
the  City. 

"Shadow,  dear,"  said  the  Earth,  "what  do 
you  think  of  that?" 

"The  very  Uttermost  Spaces  are  ashamed 
for  her,"  said  the  Shadow. 


368  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

But  of  course  the  Blue  Linen  Lady  had  no 
idea  that  the  Earth  and  its  Shadow  and  the 
Uttermost  Spaces  had  been  watching  to  see 
what  she  did. 

Littlegirl  ran  on,  many  a  weary  block,  and 
though  she  met  mother-looking  women  she 
dared  speak  to  none  of  them  for  fear  they  would 
offer  to  take  her  back  in  an  automobile,  with 
some  candy,  to  the  people  with  whom  she  lived- 
without-belonging.  And  of  late,  these  people 
had  said  things  in  her  presence  about  the  many 
mouths  to  feed,  and  she  had  heard,  and  had  un- 
derstood, and  it  had  made  her  heart  beat  Mother, 
as  it  had  when  she  wakened  that  day. 

At  last,  when  she  was  most  particularly  tired, 
she  came  to  the  park  where  it  was  large  and  cool 
and  woodsy  and  wonderful.  But  in  the  park 
the  un-motherness  of  things  was  worse  than  ever. 
To  be  sure,  there  were  no  mothers  there,  only 
nurse-maids.  But  the  nurse-maids  and  the 
children  and  the  covers-to-baby-carriages  were 
all  so  ruffly  or  lacy  or  embroidery  or  starchy 
and  so  white  that  mother  was  written  all  over 
them.  Nobody  else  could  have  cared  to  have 
them  like  that.  How  wonderful  it  would  be, 
Littlegirl  thought,  to  be  paid  attention  to  as  if 


EARTH-MOTHER  369 

you  were  a  really  person  and  not  just  hanging 
on  the  edges.  Even  the  squirrels  were  coaxed 
and  beckoned.  She  sat  down  on  the  edge  of  a 
bench  on  which  an  old  gentleman  was  feeding 
peanuts  to  a  squirrel  perched  on  his  knee,  and 
she  thought  it  would  be  next  best  to  having  a 
Christmas  tree  to  be  a  squirrel  and  have  some- 
body taking  pains  like  that  to  keep  her  near  by. 

" Where's  your  nurse,  my  dear?"  the  old 
gentleman  asked  her  finally,  and  she  ran  away 
so  that  he  should  not  guess  that  she  was  her  own 
little  girl  and  nobody  else's. 

Wherever  she  saw  a  policeman,  she  lingered  be- 
side a  group  of  children  so  that  he  would  think 
that  she  belonged  to  them.  And  once,  for  a 
long  way,  she  trotted  behind  two  nurses  and  five 
children,  pretending  that  she  belonged.  Once 
a  thin,  stooped  youth  in  spectacles  called  her 
and  gave  her  an  orange.  He  was  sitting  alone 
on  a  bench  with  his  chin  in  his  chest,  and  he 
looked  ill  and  unhappy.  Littlegirl  wondered  if 
this  was  because  he  didn't  have  any  mother 
either,  and  she  longed  to  ask  him ;  but  she  was 
afraid  he  would  not  want  to  own  to  not  having 
any,  in  a  world  where  nearly  everyone  seemed  to 
have  one.  So  she  played  through  the  long  hours 


2B 


370  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

of  the  morning.  So,  having  lunched  on  the 
orange,  she  played  through  the  long  hours  of  the 
afternoon.  And  then  Dusk  began  to  come  — 
and  Dusk  meant  that  Earth's  Shadow  had  run 
round  again,  and  was  coming  on  the  side  where 
the  City  lay. 

And  when  the  Shadow  reached  the  park,  there, 
on  a  knoll  beside  a  barberry  bush,  he  found 
Littlegirl  lying  fast  asleep. 

In  a  great  flutter  he  questioned  the  Earth. 

"Listen,"  said  Shadow,  "what  are  you  think- 
ing of  ?  Here  is  the  child  who  was  to  work  the 
miracle  and  make  the  City  turn  into  a  woman. 
And  she  is  lying  alone  in  the  park.  And  I'm 
coming  on  and  I'll  have  to  make  it  all  dark  and 
frighten  her.  What  does  this  mean  ?" 

But  the  Earth,  who  is  closer  to  people  than 
is  its  Shadow,  merely  said  :  — 

"Wait,  Shadow.  I  am  listening.  I  can  hear 
the  speeding  of  many  feet.  And  I  think  that 
the  miracle  has  begun." 

It  was  true  that  all  through  the  City  there  was 
the  speeding  of  many  feet,  and  on  one  errand. 
Wires  and  messengers  were  busy,  automobiles 
were  busy,  blue-coated  men  were  busy,  and  all  of 
them  were  doing  the  same  thing :  Looking  for 


EARTH-MOTHER  371 

Littlegirl.  Busiest  of  all  was  the  Blue  Linen 
Lady,  who  felt  herself  and  nobody  else  re- 
sponsible for  LittlegirPs  loss. 

"It  is  too  dreadful,"  she  kept  saying  over 
and  over,  "  I  had  her  with  me.  She  gave  me 
my  chance,  and  I  didn't  take  it.  If  anything 
has  happened  to  her,  I  shall  never  forgive  my- 
self." 

"That's  the  way  people  always  talk  after- 
ward," said  the  Earth's  Shadow.  "Why  don't 
they  ever  talk  that  way  before  ?  I'd  ask  the 
Uttermost  Spaces,  but  I  know  they  don't 
know." 

But  the  wise  Earth  only  listened  and  made  to 
flow  to  the  Blue  Linen  Lady's  heart  an  old 
longing.  And  when  they  had  traced  Littlegirl 
as  far  as  the  park  —  for  it  seemed  that  many  of 
the  busy  Skirts  and  Coats  and  Voices  had  no- 
ticed her,  only  they  were  so  very  busy  —  the 
Blue  Linen  Lady  herself  went  into  the  park, 
and  it  was  the  light  of  her  automobile  that 
flashed  white  on  the  glimmering  frock  of  Little- 
girl. 

Littlegirl  was  wakened,  as  never  before  within 
her  memory  she  had  been  wakened,  by  tender 
arms  about  her,  lifting  her,  and  soft  lips  kissing 


372  WHEN   I  WAS  A   LITTLE  GIRL 

her,  many  and  many  a  time.  And  waking  so, 
in  the  strange,  great  Dark,  with  the  new  shapes 
of  trees  above  her  and  tenderness  wrapping  her 
round,  and  an  in-the-middle-of-the-night  kiss 
on  her  lips,  Littlegirl  could  think  of  but  one 
thing  that  had  happened  :  — 

"Oh,  I'm  glad  I  died  —  I'm  glad  I  died!" 
she  said. 

"You  haven't  died,  you  little  thing! "cried 
the  Blue  Linen  Lady.  "You're  alive  —  and  if 
they'll  let  you  stay,  you're  never  going  to  leave 
me.  I've  made  up  my  mind  to  that.  Come  — 
come,  dear." 

Littlegirl  lay  quite  still,  too  happy  to  speak  or 
think.  For  somebody  had  said  "  dear,"  had  even 
said  "  Come,  dear."  And  it  didn't  mean  a  little 
girl  away  ahead,  or  away  back,  or  in  an  auto- 
mobile. It  meant  her. 

The  Earth's  Shadow  brooded  over  the  two 
and  helped  them  to  be  very  near. 

"It's  worth  keeping  up  with  you  all  this  time," 
Shadow  said  to  the  Earth,  "to  see  things  like 
this.  Even  the  Uttermost  Spaces  are  touched." 

But  the  Earth  was  silent,  listening.  For  the 
City,  the  beautiful,  green-robed  City  lying  in 
her  glorious  night  jewels,  knew  what  was  hap- 


EARTH-MOTHER  373 

pening  too.  And  when  the  Lady  lifted  Littlegirl, 
to  carry  her  away,  it  was  as  if  something  had 
happened  which  had  touched  the  life  of  the  City 
herself.  She  listened,  as  the  Earth  was  listen- 
ing, and  the  soft  crooning  which  men  thought 
was  the  roar  of  her  traffic  was  really  her  song 
about  what  she  heard.  For  the  story  of  Little- 
girl  spread  and  echoed,  and  other  children's 
stories  like  hers  were  in  the  song,  and  it  was  one 
of  the  times  when  the  heart  of  the  City  was 
stirred  to  a  great,  new  measure.  At  last  the 
City  understood  the  homelessness  of  children, 
and  their  labour,  and  their  suffering,  and  the 
waste  of  them ;  and  she  brooded  above  them 
like  a  mother.  .  .  .  And  suddenly  she  knew 
herself,  that  she  was  the  mother  of  all  little 
children,  and  that  she  must  care  for  them  like 
a  mother  if  she  was  to  keep  herself  alive.  And  if 
they  were  to  grow  up  to  be  her  Family,  and  not 
just  her  pretend  family,  with  nobody  looking 
out  for  anybody  else  —  as  no  true  family  would 
do. 

"Is  it  well  ?"  asked  the  Shadow,  softly,  of  the 
Earth. 

"It  is  well,"  said  the  Earth,  in  deep  content. 
"Don't  you  hear  the  human  voices  beginning 


374  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

to  sing  with  her  ?  Don't  you  see  the  other 
Cities  watching  ?  Oh,  it  is  well  indeed." 

"I'll  go  and  mention  it  to  the  Uttermost 
Spaces,"  said  the  Shadow. 

And,  in  time,  so  he  did. 


XX 

THREE    TO    MAKE    READY 

RED  mosquito-netting,  preferably  from  peach 
baskets,  was  best  for  bottles  of  pink  water.  You 
soaked  the  netting  for  a  time  depending  in 
length  on  the  shade  of  pink  you  desired  — 
light,  deep,  or  plain.  A  very  little  red  ink  pro- 
duced a  beautiful  red  water,  likewise  of  a  su- 
perior tint.  Violet  ink,  diluted,  remained  true 
to  type.  Cold  coffee  gave  the  browns  and 
yellows.  Green  tissue  paper  dissolved  into 
somewhat  dull  emerald.  Pure  blue  and  orange, 
however,  had  been  almost  impossible  to  obtain 
save  by  recourse  to  our  paint  boxes,  too  choice 
to  be  used  in  this  fashion,  or  to  a  chance  arti- 
ficial flower  on  an  accessible  hat  —  of  which  we 
were  not  at  all  too  choice,  but  whose  utiliza- 
tion might  be  followed,  not  to  say  attended,  by 
consequences. 

That  August  afternoon  we  were  at  work  on  a 
grand  scale.  At  the  Rodmans,  who  lived  on 
the  top  of  the  hill  overlooking  the  town  and  the 

375 


376  WHEN   I  WAS  A   LITTLE  GIRL 

peaceful  westward-lying  valley  of  the  river,  we 
had  chosen  to  set  up  a  great  Soda  Fountain,  the 
like  of  which  had  never  been. 

"It's  the  kind  of  a  fountain,"  Margaret 
Amelia  Rodman  explained,  "that  knights  used 
to  drink  at.  That  kind." 

We  classified  it  instantly. 

"Now,"  she  went  on,  "us  damsels  are  getting 
this  thing  up  for  the  knights  that  are  tourmeying. 
If  the  king  knew  it,  he  wouldn't  leave  us  do  it, 
because  he'd  think  it's  beneath  our  dignity. 
But  he  don't  know  it.  He's  off.  He's  to  the 
chase.  But  all  the  king's  household  is  inside 
the  palace,  and  us  damsels  have  to  be  secret, 
getting  up  our  preparations.  Now  we  must 
divide  up  the  —  er  —  responsibility." 

I  listened,  spellbound. 

"I  thought  you  and  Betty  didn't  like  to  play 
Pretend,"  I  was  surprised  into  saying. 

"Why,  we'll  pretend  if  there's  anything  to 
pretend  about  that's  real,"  said  Margaret  Amelia, 
haughtily. 

They  told  us  where  in  the  palace  the  various 
ingredients  were  likely  to  be  found.  Red  mos- 
quito-netting, perhaps,  in  the  cellar  —  at  this 
time  of  day  fairly  safe.  Red  and  violet  ink 


THREE  TO  MAKE   READY  377 

in  the  library  —  very  dangerous  indeed  at 
this  hour.  Cold  coffee  —  almost  unobtainable. 
Green  tissue  paper,  to  be  taken  from  the  flower- 
pots in  the  dining-room  —  exceedingly  danger- 
ous. Blue  and  orange,  if  discoverable  at  all, 
then  in  the  Christmas  tree  box  in  the  trunk 
room  —  attended  by  few  perils  as  to  meetings 
en  route,  but  in  respect  to  appropriating  what 
was  desired,  by  the  greatest  perils  of  all. 

This  last  adventure  the  Rodmans  themselves 
heroically  undertook.  It  was  also  conceded 
that,  on  their  return  from  their  quest  —  pro- 
vided they  ever  did  return  alive  —  it  would  be 
theirs  to  procure  the  necessary  cold  coffee. 
The  other  adventures  were  distributed,  and 
Mary  Elizabeth  and  I  were  told  off  together  to 
penetrate  the  cellar  in  search  of  red  mosquito- 
netting.  The  bottles  had  already  been  collected, 
and  these  little  Harold  Rodman  was  left  to 
guard  and  luxuriously  to  fill  with  water  and 
luxuriously  to  empty. 

There  was  an  outside  cellar  door,  and  it  was 
closed.  This  invited  Mary  Elizabeth  and  me  to 
an  expedition  or  two  before  we  even  entered.  We 
slid  from  the  top  to  the  bottom,  sitting,  stand- 
ing, and  backward.  Then,  since  Harold  was 


378  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

beginning  to  observe  us  with  some  attention, 
we  lifted  the  ring  —  the  ring  —  in  the  door  and 
descended. 

"Aladdin  immediately  beheld  bags  of  inex- 
haustible riches,"  said  Mary  Elizabeth,  almost 
reverently. 

First,  there  was  a  long,  narrow  passage  lined 
with  ash  barrels,  a  derelict  coal  scuttle,  starch 
boxes,  mummies  of  brooms,  and  the  like.  But 
at  this  point  if  we  had  chanced  on  the  red  mos- 
quito-netting, we  should  have  felt  distinctly 
cheated  of  some  right.  A  little  farther  on,  how- 
ever, the  passage  branched,  and  we  stood  in 
delighted  uncertainty.  If  the  giant  lived  one 
way  and  the  gorgon  the  other,  which  was  our 
way  ? 

The  way  that  we  did  choose  led  into  a  small 
round  cellar,  lighted  by  a  narrow,  dusty  window, 
now  closed.  Formless  things  stood  everywhere 
—  crates,  tubs,  shelves  whose  ghostly  contents 
were  shrouded  by  newspapers.  It  occurred  to 
me  that  I  had  never  yet  told  Mary  Elizabeth 
about  our  cellar.  I  decided  to  do  so  then  and 
there.  She  backed  up  against  the  wall  to  listen, 
manifestly  so  that  there  should  be  nothing  over 
her  shoulder. 


THREE  TO  MAKE  READY  379 

Our  cellar  was  a  round,  bricked-in  place  under 
the  dining-room.  Sometimes  I  had  been  down 
there  while  they  had  been  selecting  preserves 
by  candle-light.  And  I  had  long  ago  settled 
that  the  curved  walls  were  set  with  little  sealed 
doors  behind  each  of  which  He  sat.  These  His 
were  not  in  the  least  unfriendly  —  they  merely 
sat  there  close  to  the  wall,  square  shouldered 
and  very  still,  looking  neither  to  right  nor  left, 
waiting.  Probably,  I  thought,  it  might  happen 
some  day  —  whatever  they  waited  for ;  and 
then  they  would  all  go  away.  Meanwhile, 
there  they  were ;  and  they  evidently  knew  that 
I  knew  they  were  there,  but  they  evidently  did 
not  expect  me  to  mention  it ;  for  once,  when  I 
did  so,  they  all  stopped  doing  nothing  and  looked 
at  me,  all  together,  as  if  something  used  their 
eyes  for  them  at  a  signal.  It  was  to  Mary  Gil- 
braith  that  I  had  spoken,  while  she  was  at  our 
house-cleaning,  and  the  moment  I  had  chosen 
was  when  she  was  down  in  the  cellar  without 
a  candle  and  I  was  lying  flat  on  the  floor  above 
her,  peering  down  the  trap  doorway. 

"Mary,"  I  said,  "they's  a  big  row  of  He's 
sitting  close  together  inside  the  wall.  They've 
got  big  foreheads.  Bang  on  the  wall  and  see  if 


380  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

they'll  answer — "  for  I  had  always  longed  to 
bang  and  had  never  quite  dared. 

"Oh,  my  great  Scotland!"  said  Mary  Gil- 
braith,  and  was  up  the  ladder  in  a  second.  That 
was  when  they  looked  at  me,  and  then  I  knew 
that  I  should  not  have  spoken  to  her  about 
them,  and  I  began  to  see  that  there  are  some 
things  that  must  not  be  said.  And  I  felt  a 
kind  of  shame,  too,  when  Mary  turned  on  me. 
"You  little  Miss,"  she  said  wrathfully,  "with 
your  big  eyes.  An'  myself  bitin'  on  my  own 
nerves  for  fear  of  picking  up  a  lizard  for  a  potato. 
Go  play." 

"I  was  playing,"  I  tried  to  explain. 

"Play  playthings,  then,  and  not  ha'nts," 
said  Mary. 

So  I  never  said  anything  more  to  her,  save 
about  plates  and  fritters  and  such  things. 

To  this  recital  Mary  Elizabeth  listened  sym- 
pathetically. 

"There's  just  one  great  big  one  lives  down  in 
our  cellar,"  she  confided  in  turn.  "  Not  in  the 
wall  —  but  out  loose.  When  the  apples  and 
stuff  go  down  there,  I  always  think  how  glad 
he  is." 

"Are  you  afraid  of  him  ?"  I  asked. 


THREE  TO  MAKE   READY  381 

"Afraid!"  Mary  Elizabeth  repeated.  "Why, 
no.  Once,  when  I  was  down  there,  I  tried  to 
pretend  there  wasn't  anything  lived  there  — 
and  then  it  was  frightening  and  I  was  scared." 

I  understood.  It  would  indeed  be  a  great, 
lonely,  terrifying  world  if  these  little  friendly 
folk  did  not  live  in  cellars,  walls,  attics,  stair- 
closets  and  the  like.  Of  course  they  were 
friendly.  Why  should  they  be  otherwise  ? 

"R-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-t,"  something  went,  close  by 
Mary  Elizabeth's  head. 

We  looked  up.  The  dimness  of  the  ceiling 
was  miles  deep.  We  could  not  see  a  ceiling. 

"St-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t,"  it  went  again.  And  this 
time  it  did  not  stop,  and  it  began  to  be  accom- 
panied by  a  rumbling  sound  as  from  the  very 
cave  inside  the  world. 

Mary  Elizabeth  and  I  took  hold  of  hands  and 
ran.  We  scrambled  up  the  steps  and  escaped 
to  the  sultry  welcome  of  bright  day.  Out 
there  everything  was  as  before.  Little  Harold 
was  crossing  the  lawn  carrying  a  flower-pot  of 
water  which  was  running  steadily  from  the  hole 
in  the  bottom.  With  the  maternal  importance 
of  little  girls,  we  got  the  jar  from  him  and  under- 
took to  bring  him  more  water.  And  when  he 


382  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

led  us  to  the  source  of  supply,  this  was  a  faucet 
in  the  side  of  the  house  just  beyond  a  narrow, 
dusty,  cellar  window.  When  he  turned  the 
faucet,  we  were,  so  to  speak,  face  to  face  with 
that  R-s-t-t-t-t-t. 

Mary  Elizabeth  and  I  looked  at  each  other 
and  looked  away.  Then  we  looked  back  and 
braved  it  through. 

"Anyway,"  she  said,  "we  were  afraid  of  a 
truly  thing,  and  not  of  a  pretend  thing." 

There  seemed  to  us,  I  recall,  a  certain  loyalty 
in  this  as  to  a  creed. 

Already  Delia  had  returned  from  the  library. 
The  authorities  refused  the  ink.  One  might 
come  in  there  and  write  with  it,  but  one  must  not 
take  it  from  the  table.  Calista  arrived  from 
the  dining-room.  A  waiting-woman  to  the 
queen,  she  reported,  was  engaged  in  dusting 
the  sideboard  and  she  herself  had  advanced 
no  farther  than  the  pantry  door.  It  remained 
only  for  Margaret  Amelia  and  Betty  to  come 
from  their  farther  quest  bearing  a  green  hand- 
bill which  they  thought  might  take  the  place  of 
Calista's  quarry  if  she  returned  empty-handed ; 
but  we  were  no  nearer  than  before  to  blue  and 
orange  materials,  or  to  any  other. 


THREE  TO  MAKE   READY  383 

We  took  counsel  and  came  to  a  certain  ancient 
conclusion  that  in  union  there  is  strength.  We 
must,  we  thought  we  saw,  act  the  aggressor. 
We  moved  on  the  stronghold  together.  Armed 
with  a  spoon  and  two  bottles,  we  found  a  keeper 
of  properties  within  who  spooned  us  out  the 
necessary  ink ;  tea  was  promised  to  take  the 
place  of  coffee  if  we  would  keep  out  of  the  house 
and  not  bother  anybody  any  more,  indefinitely; 
shoe-polish  was  conceded  in  a  limited  quantity, 
briefly,  and  under  inspection ;  and  we  all  de- 
scended into  Aladdin's  cave  and  easily  found 
baskets  to  which  red  mosquito-netting  was  cling- 
ing in  sufficient  measure.  Then  we  sat  in  the 
shade  of  the  side  lawn  and  proceeded  to  colour 
many  waters. 

It  was  a  delicate  task  to  cloud  the  clear  liquid 
to  this  tint  and  that,  to  watch  it  change  expres- 
sion under  our  hands,  pale,  deepen,  vary  to  our 
touch ;  in  its  heart  to  set  jewels  and  to  light 
fires.  We  worked  with  deep  deliberation,  test- 
ing by  old  standards  of  taste  set  up  by  at  least 
two  or  three  previous  experiences,  consulting 
one  another's  soberest  judgment,  occasionally 
inventing  a  new  liquid.  I  remember  that  it  was 
on  that  day  that  we  first  thought  of  bluing. 


384  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

Common  washing  bluing,  the  one  substance 
really  intended  for  colouring  water,  had  so  far 
escaped  our  notice. 

"Somebody,"  observed  Margaret  Amelia,  as 
we  worked,  "ought  to  keep  keeping  a  look-out  to 
see  if  they're  coming  back." 

Delia,  who  was  our  man  of  action,  ran  to  the 
clothes-reel,  which  stood  on  the  highest  land  of 
the  castle  grounds,  and  looked  away  over  the 
valley. 

"There's  a  cloud  of  dust  on  the  horizon," 
she  reported,  "but  I  think  it's  Mr.  Wells  getting 
home  from  Caledonia." 

"Wouldn't  they  blare  their  horns  before  they 
got  here  ?"  Mary  Elizabeth  wanted  to  know. 

"What  was  a  knight  /or,  anyway  ?"  Delia 
demanded. 

"For?"  Margaret  Amelia  repeated,  in  a  kind 
of  personal  indignation.  "Why,  to  —  to  —  to 
right  wrongs,  of  course." 

Delia  surveyed  the  surrounding  scene  through 
the  diluted  red  ink  in  a  glass-stoppered  bottle. 

"I  guess  I  know  that,"  she  said.  "But  I 
mean,  what  was  his  job  ?" 

We  had  never  thought  of  that.  Did  one,  then, 
have  to  have  a  job  other  than  righting  wrongs  ? 

Margaret  Amelia  undertook  to  explain. 


THREE  TO  MAKE   READY  385 

"Why,"  she  said,  "it  was  this  way:  Knights 
liberated  damsels  and  razed  down  strongholds 
and  took  robber  chieftains  and  got  into  adven- 
tures. And  they  lived  off  the  king  and  off 
hermits." 

"But  what  was  the  end  of  'em  ?"  Delia  wanted 
to  know.  "They  never  married  and  lived 
happily  ever  after.  They  married  and  just 
kept  right  on  going." 

"That  was  on  account  of  the  Holy  Grail," 
said  Mary  Elizabeth.  It  was  wonderful,  as  I 
look  back,  to  remember  how  her  face  would  light 
sometimes  ;  as  just  then,  and  as  when  somebody 
came  to  school  with  the  first  violets. 

"The  what?"  said  Delia. 

"They  woke  up  in  the  night  sometimes," 
Mary  Elizabeth  recited  softly,  "and  they  saw  it, 
in  light,  right  there  inside  their  dark  cell.  And 
they  looked  and  looked,  and  it  was  all  shiny 
and  near-to.  And  when  they  saw  it,  they  knew 
about  all  the  principal  things.  And  those  that 
never  woke  up  and  saw  it,  always  kept  trying  to, 
because  they  knew  they  weren't  really  ones  till 
they  saw.  Most  everybody  wasn't  really,  be- 
cause only  a  few  saw  it.  Most  of  them  died  and 
never  saw  it  at  all." 

2C 


386  WHEN   I  WAS  A   LITTLE  GIRL 

"What  did  it  look  like?"    demanded  Delia. 

"Hush  !"  said  Calista,  with  a  shocked  glance, 
having  somewhere  picked  up  the  impression  that 
very  sacred  things,  like  very  wicked  things, 
must  never  be  mentioned.  But  Mary  Eliza- 
beth did  not  heed  her. 

"It  was  all  shining  and  near  to,"  she  repeated. 
"It  was  in  a  great,  dark  sky,  with  great,  bright 
worlds  falling  all  around  it,  but  it  was  in  the 
centre  and  it  didn't  fall.  It  was  all  still,  and 
brighter  than  anything;  and  when  you  saw  it, 
you  never  forgot." 

There  was  a  moment's  pause,  which  Delia 
broke. 

"How  do  you  know  ?"  she  demanded. 

Mary  Elizabeth  was  clouding  red  mosquito- 
netting  water  by  shaking  soap  in  it,  an  effect 
much  to  be  desired.  She  went  on  shaking  the 
corked  bottle,  and  looking  away  toward  the 
sun  slanting  to  late  afternoon. 

"I  don't  know  how  I  know,"  she  said  in  mani- 
fest surprise.  "But  I  know." 

We  sat  silent  for  a  minute. 

"Well,  I'm  going  back  to  see  if  they're  coming 
home  from  the  hunt  now"  said  Delia,  scram- 
bling up. 


THREE  TO  MAKE  READY  387 

"From  the  chase"  Margaret  Amelia  cor- 
rected her  loftily,  "and  from  the  tourmey.  I 
b'lieve,"  she  corrected  herself  conscientiously, 
"that  had  ought  to  be  tourmament." 

This  time  Delia  thought  that  she  saw  them 
coming,  the  king  and  his  knights,  with  pennons 
and  plumes,  just  entering  Conant  Street  down 
by  the  Brices.  As  we  must  be  ready  by  the 
time  the  party  dismounted,  there  was  need  for 
the  greatest  haste.  But  we  found  that  the 
clothes-reel,  which  was  to  be  the  fountain,  must 
have  a  rug  and  should  have  flowing  curtains  if 
it  were  to  grace  a  castle  courtyard  ;  so,  matters 
having  been  further  delayed  by  the  discovery 
of  Harold  about  to  drink  the  vanilla  water, 
we  concluded  that  we  had  been  mistaken  about 
the  approach  of  the  knights  ;  and  that  they  were 
by  now  only  on  the  bridge. 

A  journey  to  the  attic  for  the  rug  and  curtains 
resulted  in  delays,  the  sight  of  some  cast-off 
garments  imperatively  suggesting  the  fitness 
of  our  dressing  for  the  role  we  were  to  assume. 
This  took  some  time  and  was  accompanied  by 
the  selection  of  new  names  all  around.  At  last, 
however,  we  were  back  in  the  yard  with  the  rugs 
and  the  muslin  curtains  in  place,  and  the  array 


388  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE   GIRL 

of  coloured  bottles  set  up  in  rows  at  the  top  of 
the  carpeted  steps.  Then  we  arranged  ourselves 
behind  these  delicacies,  in  our  bravery  of  old 
veils  and  scarves  and  tattered  sequins.  Harold 
was  below,  as  a  page,  in  a  red  sash.  "A  little 
foot-page,"  Margaret  Amelia  had  wanted  him 
called,  but  this  he  himself  vetoed. 

"Mine  feet  big  feet,"  he  defended  himself. 

Then  we  waited. 

We  .waited,  chatted  amiably,  as  court  ladies 
will.  Occasionally  we  rose  and  scanned  the 
street,  and  reported  that  they  were  almost  here. 
Then  we  resumed  our  seats  and  waited.  This 
business  had  distinctly  palled  on  us  all  when 
Delia  faced  it. 

"Let's  have  them  get  here  if  they're  going  to," 
she  said. 

So  we  sat  and  told  each  other  that  they  were 
entering  the  yard,  that  they  were  approaching 
the  dais,  that  they  were  kneeling  at  our  feet. 
But  it  was  unconvincing.  None  of  us  really 
wanted  them  to  kneel  or  knew  what  to  do  with 
them  when  they  did  kneel.  The  whole  pretence 
was  lacking  in  action,  and  very  pale. 

"  It  was  lots  more  fun  getting  ready  than  this 
is,"  said  Calista,  somewhat  brutally. 


THREE   TO  MAKE   READY  389 

We  stared  in  one  another's  faces,  feeling  guilty 
of  a  kind  of  disloyalty,  yet  compelled  to  ac- 
knowledge this  great  truth.  In  our  hearts  we 
remembered  to  have  noticed  this  thing  before : 
That  getting  ready  for  a  thing  was  more  fun 
than  doing  that  thing. 

"Why  couldn't  we  get  a  quest  ?"  inquired 
Margaret  Amelia.  "Then  it  wouldn't  have  to 
stop.  It'd  last  every  day." 

That  was  the  obvious  solution :  We  would 
get  a  quest. 

"Girls  can't  quest,  can  they  ?"  Betty  sug- 
gested doubtfully. 

We  looked  in  one  another's  faces.  Could 
it  be  true  ?  Did  the  damsels  sit  at  home  ? 
Was  it  only  the  knights  who  quested  ? 

Delia  was  a  free  soul.  Forthwith  she  made  a 
precedent. 

"Well,"  she  said,  "I  don't  know  whether  they 
did  quest.  But  they  can  quest.  So  let's  do  it." 

The  reason  in  this  appealed  to  us  all.  Im- 
mediately we  confronted  the  problem :  What 
should  we  quest  for  ? 

We  stared  off  over  the  valley  through  which 
the  little  river  ran  shining  and  slipped  beyond 
our  horizon. 


390  WHEN   I  WAS  A  LITTLE  GIRL 

"I    wonder,"    said    Mary    Elizabeth,    "if   it 
would  be  wrong  to  quest   for   the  Holy   Grail 


now.' 


We  stood  there  against  the  west,  where 
bright  doors  seemed  opening  in  the  pouring  gold 
of  the  sun,  thick  with  shining  dust.  The  glory 
seemed  very  near.  Why  not  do  something 
beautiful  ?  Why  not  —  why  not  .  .  . 


E  following  pages  contain  advertisements  of  Mac- 
millan  books  by  the  same  author,  and  new  fiction 


By  the  Same  Author 

Christmas 

BY  ZONA    GALE 

Author  of  "  Mothers  to  Men,"  "  The  Loves  of  Pelleas  and  Etarre." 
Illustrated  in  colors  by  LEON  SOLON. 

Decorated  doth,  I2mo,  $1.30  net;  postpaid,  $1.42 

A  town  in  the  Middle  West,  pinched  with  poverty,  decides 
that  it  will  have  no  Christmas,  as  no  one  can  afford  to  buy  gifts. 
They  perhaps  foolishly  reckon  that  the  heart-burnings  and  the 
disappointments  of  the  children  will  be  obviated  by  passing  the 
holiday  season  over  with  no  observance.  How  this  was  found 
to  be  simply  and  wholly  impossible,  how  the  Christmas  joys  and 
Christmas  spirit  crept  into  the  little  town  and  into  the  hearts  of 
its  most  positive  objectors,  and  how  Christmas  cannot  be  arbi- 
trated about,  make  up  the  basis  of  a  more  than  ordinarily 
appealing  novel.  Incidentally  it  is  a  little  boy  who  really  makes 
possible  a  delightful  outcome.  A  thread  of  romance  runs  through 
it  all  with  something  of  the  meaning  of  Christmas  for  the  indi- 
vidual human  being  and  for  the  race. 

"  A  fine  story  of  Yuletide  impulses  in  Miss  Gale's  best  style." 
—  N.Y.  World. 

"  No  living  writer  more  thoroughly  understands  the  true  spirit 
of  Christmas  than  does  Zona  Gale."  —  Chicago  Record-Herald. 

"  <  Christmas '  is  that  rare  thing,  a  Yuletide  tale,  with  a  touch 
of  originality  about  it."  —  N.  Y.  Press. 

"  The  book  is  just  the  thing  for  a  gift."  —  Chicago  Tribune. 


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The  Other  Books  of  Miss  Gale 
Mothers  to  Men 

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The  author  is  singularly  successful  in  detaching  herself  from  all  the 
wear  and  tear  of  modern  life  and  has  produced  a  book  filled  with 
sweetness,  beautiful  in  ideas,  charming  in  characterizations,  highly  con- 
templative, and  evidencing  a  philosophy  of  life  all  her  own. 

"One  of  the  most  widely  read  of  our  writers  of  short  fiction."  — 
The  Bookman. 

Friendship  Village 

Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.50  net 

"  As  charming  as  an  April  day,  all  showers  and  sunshine,  and  some- 
times both  together,  so  that  the  delighted  reader  hardly  knows  whether 
laughter  or  tears  are  fittest."  —  The  New  York  Times. 

The  Loves  of  Pelleas  and  Etarre 

Cloth,  isrno,  $i.jo  net 

Macmillan  Fiction  Library 

I2mo,  $\jo  net 

"  It  contains  the  sort  of  message  that  seems  to  set  the  world  right 
for  even  the  most  depressed,  and  can  be  depended  upon  to  sweeten 
every  moment  spent  over  it."  —  San  Francisco  Chronicle. 

Friendship  Village  Love  Stories 

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Miss  Gale's  pleasant  and  highly  individual  outlook  upon  life  has 
never  been  revealed  to  better  advantage  than  in  these  charming  stories 
of  the  heart  affairs  of  the  young  people  of  Friendship  Village. 


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New  Macmittan  Fiction 

MRS.   WATTS'S  NEW  NOVEL 

Van    Cleve 

BY  MARY   S.    WATTS 
Author  of  "  Nathan  Burke,"  "  The  Legacy,"  etc. 

Cloth,  I21HO. 

Never  has  the  author  of  "  Nathan  Burke "  and 
"  The  Legacy  "  written  more  convincingly  or  appeal- 
ingly  than  in  this  story  of  modern  life.  Those  who 
have  enjoyed  the  intense  realism  of  Mrs.  Watts's 
earlier  work,  the  settings  of  which  have  largely  been 
of  the  past,  will  welcome  this  book  of  the  present  in 
which  she  demonstrates  that  her  skill  is  no  less  in 
handling  scenes  and  types  of  people  with  which  we 
are  familiar  than  in  the  so-called  "  historical "  novel. 
"  Van  Cleve  "  is  about  a  young  man  who,  while  still 
in  his  early  twenties,  is  obliged  to  support  a  family 
of  foolish,  good-hearted,  ill-balanced  women,  and  one 
shiftless,  pompous  old  man,  his  grandmother,  aunt, 
cousin,  and  uncle.  Van  Cleve  proves  himself  equal  to 
the  obligation  —  and  equal,  too,  to  many  other  severe 
tests  that  are  put  "upon  him  by  his  friends.  Besides 
him  there  is  one  character  which  it  is  doubtful  whether 
the  reader  will  ever  forget  —  Bob.  His  life  not  only 
shapes  Van  Cleve's  to  a  large  extent,  but  that  of 
several  other  people,  notably  his  sister,  the  girl  whom 
Van  Cleve  loves  in  his  patient  way. 


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New  Macmillan  Fiction 

The  Valley  of  the  Moon 

BY  JACK  LONDON 
With  Frontispiece  in  Colors  by  GEORGE  HARPER 

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A  love  story  in  Mr.  London's  most  powerful  style,  strikingly 
contrasted  against  a  background  of  present-day  economic  prob- 
lems—  that  is  what  "The  Valley  of  the  Moon"  is.  The  hero, 
teamster,  prize-fighter,  adventurer,  man  of  affairs,  is  one  of  Mr. 
London's  unforgetable  big  men.  The  romance  which  develops  out 
of  his  meeting  with  a  charming  girl  and  which  does  not  end  with 
their  marriage  is  absorbingly  told.  The  action  of  the  plot  is 
most  rapid,  one  event  following  another  in  a  fashion  which  does 
not  allow  the  reader  to  lose  interest  even  temporarily.  "  The 
Valley  of  the  Moon  "  is,  in  other  words,  an  old-fashioned  Lon- 
don novel,  with  all  of  the  entertainment  that  such  a  description 
implies, 

Robin  Hood's  Barn 

BY  ALICE  BROWN 

Author  of  "  Vanishing  Points,"  "  The  Secret  of  the  Clan,"  "  The  Country 
Road,"  etc. 

With  Illustrations  in  Colors  and  in  Black  and  White  by 
H.  M.  CARPENTER 

Decorated  cloth,  i2tno,  $0.00  net 

Miss  Brown's  previous  books  have  given  her  a  distinguished 
reputation  as  an  interpreter  of  New  England  life.  The  idealism, 
the  quaint  humor,  the  skill  in  character  drawing,  and  the  dra- 
matic force  which  have  always  marked  her  work  are  evident  in 
this  charming  story  of  a  dream  that  came  true.  The  illustra- 
tions, the  frontispiece  being  in  colors,  the  others  in  black  and 
white,  are  by  Mr.  Horace  Carpenter,  whose  sympathetic  crafts- 
manship is  widely  known  and  appreciated. 


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New  Macmillan  Fiction 

Deering  at  Princeton 

BY  LATTA  GRISWOLD 

Author  of  "  Deering  of  Deal " 

With  Illustrations  by  E.  C.  CASWELL 

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This  is  a  college  story  that  reads  as  a  college  story  should. 
Here  Mr.  Griswold  tells  of  Deering's  Princeton  years  from  his 
freshman  days  to  his  graduation.  A  hazing  adventure  of  far- 
reaching  importance,  a  football  game  or  two  in  which  Deering 
has  a  hand,  a  reform  in  the  eating  club  system,  the  fraternity 
regime  of  Princeton,  initiated  by  Deering  and  carried  through  at 
the  sacrifice  of  much  that  he  values,  a  touch  of  sentiment  center- 
ing around  a  pretty  girl  who  later  marries  Deering's  roommate, 
besides  many  lively  college  happenings  which  only  one  familiar 
with  the  life  could  have  chronicled,  go  to  the  making  of  an  in- 
tensely interesting  tale. 

Tide  Marks 

BY  MARGARET  WESTRUP 

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A  novel  of  unusual  interest  and  power  told  in  a  style  both  con- 
vincing and  distinctive.  Margaret  Westrup  promises  to  be  one 
of  the  literary  finds  of  the  season. 

The  Will  to  Live 

BY  M.    P.   WILLCOCKS 

Author  of  "  The  Wingless  Victory,"  etc. 

Cloth,  12 mo;  preparing 

In  description,  in  vividness  of  character  depiction,  in  clever- 
ness of  dialogue,  and  in  skill  of  plot  construction,  Miss  Willcocks' 
previous  books  have  displayed  her  rare  ability.  "  The  Will  to 
Live  "  is  perhaps  her  most  mature  work ;  it  is  a  story  with  which 
one  is  sure  to  be  satisfied  when  the  last  page  is  turned. 


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